Recently published Ornithological Works. 89 



3. The importance of collecting further information on 

 the origin of our domestic animals. 



For urging these three subjects on the attention of the 

 authorities, M. Oustalet will, we are sure, receive the cordial 

 thanks of every member of the B. O. U. But in some in- 

 stances we think that M. Oustalet goes too far in his general 

 defence of nearly every species. In extolling the supposed 

 benefits conferred by the House -Sparrow, and especially their 

 vast utility in the United States, he writes of a date no more 

 recent than 1869, and is evidently in complete ignorance of 

 the entire revulsion of feeling in America as regards this bird. 

 For him all the voluminous literature on the Sparrow question, 

 and the general consensus of opinion that it is an unmitigated 

 evil, not only in America, but also in New Zealand, has appa- 

 rently been written in vain. On the other hand, we quite 

 agree with M. Oustalet and with M. Crette de Palluel that 

 the Golden Oriole, generally condemned in France as a bird 

 destructive to fruits, especially to cherries, really feeds 

 both itself and its young during the summer almost ex- 

 clusively on insects. We were sorry to see this notion, which 

 we must consider a grave error, sanctioned and propagated 

 by one of the new groups of birds in the British Museum of 

 Natural History, where a male Golden Oriole is mounted, 

 bearing two cherries to his mate, which is sitting on her 

 nest. 



The injury inflicted on many species of birds by the numer- 

 ous lines of telegraph-wires which now stretch across Europe 

 is incontestable ; but, for all that, we cannot abolish aerial 

 lines. One use of electricity, which M. Oustalet mentions, 

 is new to us. It appears that in some parts of France a 

 dead tree is encircled with a band of copper connected by a 

 wire with a battery, and when the branches are covered with 

 birds a shock is administered which makes them fall like ripe 

 fruit. The selection of a dead tree by the proprietor is in- 

 telligible, and shows that although on sporting he is bent, 

 he has a frugal mind ; but the reason for choice of a dead tree 

 by the perchers is less obvious. 



