chines. Moreover, its whistle is the curious thin treble so common in
European motor engines, railroad and other. The old-fashioned hand-pumps
have almost completely disappeared, with the exception of some
localities like the Butte Montmartre, too steep to be approached by
horses. In the central stations, the arrangements are those generally
adopted nowadays to secure the quickest possible service,--even to the
harness suspended from hooks in the ceilings to be dropped on the
horses' backs, and the metal pole down which the men slide from their
sleeping-rooms above.

[Illustration: SAPEUR-POMPIER AT A FIRE-PLUG.

After a drawing by M. Carney.]

For particular service, details for the theatres, balls, private clubs,
etc., the number of men is fixed by the Prefet de Police, and there is
extra pay in all these cases. The department is also called upon in
case of street accidents, falling buildings, asphyxia in sewers, etc.
The service material includes special apparatus for respiration in
cellars, basements, etc., where the presence of gas or smoke is to be
apprehended; and the great ladder, carried on a special truck, has a
length of twenty metres, greater than the average height of the Parisian
houses. It is stated that the time allowed to elapse between the receipt
of an alarm in the stations and the departure for the fire is often
under a minute, and never exceeds two; in 1896, the time between the
alarm and the attack of the fire was less than five minutes in ten
hundred and seventy-nine fires out of a total of twelve hundred and
four. In seven hundred and eighty-four cases, in the same year, the
conflagration was completely extinguished in five minutes, and the very
longest fire lasted six hours and a half.

At the entrance of each of the twelve casernes, or barracks, of the
regiment, the names of the officers and soldiers who have been killed in
the discharge of their duty are engraved on a slab of black marble, the
Golden Book of the regiment. In the court of the etat-major the names of
the forty sapeurs-pompiers who have thus died since 1821, are engraved
on a marble panel. In his order of the day, March 11, 1888, "the colonel
informs the regiment, with profound grief, of the deaths of Corporal
Toulon and former sergeant Sixdenier, who perished yesterday, at noon,
victims of their devotion, in endeavoring to save an imprudent workman
who had descended, without taking precautions, into an excavation of the
Rue