INTEODUCTION OF BIRDS. 115 



grasshopper took possession of the island devouring, withering, 

 scorching with a biting drought all that they did not consume. 

 In Korth America it has been the same with the starHng, the 

 protector of Indian com.* Even the sparrow, which reaUy does 

 attack grain, but which protects it still more, the pilferer, the 

 outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses — it has been 

 found in Hungary that they were hkely to perish without him, 

 that he alone could sustain the mighty war against the beetles 

 and the thousand winged enemies that swarm in the lowlands ; 

 they have revoked the decree of banishment, recalled in haste 

 the vahant militia, which, though deficient in discipline, is never- 

 theless the salvation of the country, f 



"ISTot long since, in the neighborhood of Eouen and in the 

 valley of MonviUe, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. 

 The beetles profited weU by this proscription ; their larvse, in- 

 finitely multiphed, carried on their subterranean labors with such 

 success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was 

 completely dried up, every herbaceous root was consumed, and 

 the whole grassy mantle, easily loosened, might have been roUed 

 up and carried away like a carpet." 



The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller 

 birds is, in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the 

 game laws. When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by 

 those laws were suddenly removed in France, the whole people 

 at once commenced a destructive campaign against every species 

 of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in Provence, on the 30th 

 of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly had declared 

 the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he experienced 

 from the use made by the peasantry of their newly-won liberty : 



* I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am imable to 

 confirm it. 



\ Apropos of the sparrow — a single pair of which, according to Michelet, 

 p. 315, carries to the nest fovir thousand and three hundred caterpillars or 

 coleoptera in a week — I find in an English newspaper a report of a meeting of 

 a " Sparrow Club," stating that the member who took the first prize had de- 

 stroyed 1,467 of these birds within the year, and that the prowess of the other 

 members had brought the total number up to 11,944 birds, besides 2,556 eggs. 

 Every one of the fourteen thousand hatched and unhatched birds, thus sac- 

 rificed to puerile vanity and ignorant prejudice, would have saved his bushe. 

 of wheat by preying upon insects that destroy the grain. 



