116 INTEODUCTION OF BIRDS. 



" One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence "waa 

 at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The 

 wadding buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six 

 times in the course of the day." . . . . " The declaration of the 

 Assembly that every man is free to hunt on his own land .... 



has filled all France with an intolerable cloud of sportsmen 



The declaration speaks of compensations and indemnities [to the 

 seigneurs], but the ungovernable populace takes advantage of the 

 abolition of the game laws and laughs at the obhgation imposed 

 by the decree." 



Tlie contagious influence of the French Revolution occasioned 

 the removal of similar restrictions, with similar results, in other 

 countries. The habits then formed have become hereditary on 

 the Continent, and though game laws still exist in England, there 

 is httle doubt that the bhnd prejudices of the ignorant and half- 

 educated classes in that country against birds are, in some degree, 

 at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase of 

 game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to indem- 

 nify himseK by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved 

 for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor 

 buys his partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of 

 his tenants, and so long as the members of " Sparrow Clubs " 

 are forbidden to follow higher game, they will suicidally revenge 

 themselves by destroying the birds which protect their wheat- 

 fields. 



On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative 

 scarcity and dearness of animal food combine with the feehng I 

 have just mentioned to stimulate still further the destructive 

 passions of the fowler. In the Tuscan province of Grosseto, 

 containing less than 2,000 square miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes 

 and other small birds are annually brought to market.* 



* Salvagnoli, Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane, p. 143. The country about 

 Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high, which are a 

 standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the fowlers who watch 

 from them the flocks of small birds and drive them down into the nets by 

 throwing stones over them. 



In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove- 

 like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to 

 collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations 

 are called ragnaje, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a 



