160 INTER.YATIONAL BIRD PROTECTION. [July 



Our third diagram represents the instrument shaped like a fork 

 atop a wooden pole, so as to operate on high trees. The reservoir E 

 in this case is at one end, and the reticulated hood X at the opposite 

 side of the fork X just beneath where the gas jet B issues. 



The scientific principles of this instrument in its two forms are 

 perfect ; and the mechanical appliances necessary in successful 

 practice appear ingenious and complete. Our readers will appreciate 

 the services it may perform in British woods and gardens. 



INTERNATIONAL BIRD PROTECTION. 



"VrOT the least interesting of several important papers which 

 ■^ comprise the last fasciculus of the Bidletin issued by the 

 French Minister of Agriculture, is the Eeport by Dr. Custalet, who 

 was deputed to attend the International Ornithological Congress 

 held in Vienna on 7th April 1884. We can only refer to the topic 

 of our title, which was one of the three subjects of discussion by the 

 distinguished group of noblemen and scientists of various nationalities 

 who then met in session, presided over by S. A. L. and E. Archduke 

 Eudolphe. The paper occupies fully 28 quarto pages of the 

 Bulletin, and is to be continued. Our references must be forestal 

 and at random. 



To the traps and snares spread by man for the destruction of the 

 bird world, have lately been added fishes and electricity. In the 

 neighbourhood of some towns in Central France, much game has 

 been recently destroyed by strychnine ; whilst near Marseilles the 

 following ingenious trap was lately in full operation : a length of 

 copper wire twined round the old branch of a tree and connected at 

 its base with a Ehumkorf coil ; whilst near this branch a prepared 

 bird was perched on to the top of a pole to attract its coiifrhre,s. 

 No sooner had a great number been thus enticed on to the 

 treacherous copper wire than the electric battery was set in motion, 

 causing instant death. 



But civilization has also originated indirect means of bird destruc- 

 tion ; amongst which is the unreflecting destruction of trees. The 

 insectivorous birds can thus find no resting-place and refuge from 

 hawks. Lines of telegraph have been certainly prejudicial to passage 

 of birds. Thus Dr. Elliot Cones counted in a space of three miles 

 in Colorado, no fewer than an hundred birds killed by the wires. 

 Then lighthouses serve to attract the migratory races to their 

 destruction. Thus at Heligoland, which lies directly in the route 

 of the birds of passage in their way from Africa and Central Europe 

 to the far north, no fewer than 5000 larks have been captured in a 



