70 On general Zoological changes. 



as it has in England, were the former country as much inter- 

 sected by hedges as the latter, since the success with which 

 that bird evades its enemy, depends altogether on its com- 

 manding a wide range of sight. The great numbers in which 

 the white stork is found in Holland, as well as in many parts 

 of Germany, are owing to the pious prejudice which protects 

 the bird there ; whereas it is extremely scarce in England, 

 where there are so many fine localities for it, but where it is 

 wantonly shot, as the heron is with us. The predilection for 

 the chimney- swallow, a bird that would soon be extinct, were 

 man its enemy, is even more general than that for the white 

 stork. 



We may also hope, (as has been lately tried in Scotland, 

 but I know not with what success, with respect to the caper- 

 cailzie introduced from Norway), to see many species reoccu- 

 pying their legitimate domiciles, when the wanton persecution 

 of them shall have been put a stop to. Certain harmless and 

 interesting species, that have clung to certain spots almost 

 like parasitic plants, have at last been driven from them, by 

 the incessant destruction of the individuals that settled there. 

 Thus, I may refer to the black stork, a species generally scarce, 

 which used to breed on a rock near the village of Dorrenberg, 

 in the Thuringian mountains, but which has so repeatedly 

 been shot and deprived of its young there, that at last none 

 of the individuals which used to pass over that neighbourhood, 

 has been left, to settle on that favourite spot. Then the blue- 

 breast, {Sylvia mecica, Lath. S. cyanecula, Meyer), has tried, 

 every spring within the recollection of man, to settle on the 

 southern escarpment of a bushy hill near Waltershausen, on 

 the northern slope of the same mountains, but has always 

 been caught by the expert fowlers of that town, almost as soon 

 as it alighted. 



Other wild species will, no doubt, be naturalized, in many 

 civilized countries, where they are not indigenous ; as was ef- 

 fected last year in Silesia, with the Tetrao rufus, introduced 

 from the south of France, by a society of proprietors. The 

 experiment, I understand, promises to succeed perfectly, as 

 the birds bred last summer, and appear to thrive in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Breslau. Even with fish or other classes, simi- 

 lar experiments will be attended with success, when science 

 shall have made us more perfectly acquainted with the condi- 

 tions on which their existence depends. 

 (To be continued). 



