INTKODUCTIOlSr OF BIRDS. 117 



Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility oi 

 accommodation,* and they are more severely affected by cKmatic 

 excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want the special 

 means of shelter against the inclemency of the weather and 



very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now 

 ascribed to that eminent writer. 



Tschudi has collected in his little work, ZTeie?' die LandwirtTischaftUcJie Be- 

 deutung der Vogel, many Interesting facts respecting the utility of birds, and 

 the wanton destruction of them in Italy and elsewhere. Not only the owl, 

 but many other birds more familiarly known as predacious in their habits, are 

 useful by destroying great numbers of mice and moles. The importance of 

 this last service becomes strikingly apparent when it is known that the bur- 

 rows of the moles are among the most frequent causes of rupture in the dikes 

 of the Po, and, consequently, of inundations which lay many square miles of 

 land under water. See Annales cles Fonts et Ghaussees, 1847, 1"* semestre, p. 

 150 ; VoGT, NutzUche und schddlicTie Thiere; and particularly articles in the 

 G-lornale del Club Alpino, vol. iv.. No. 15, and vol. v., No. 16. 



See also in Aus der Natur, vol. 54, p. 797, an article entitled Nutzen der 

 Vogd fur die Landicirthschaft, where it is affirmed that "without birds no 

 agriculture or even vegetation would be possible." 



In an interesting memoir by Rondani, published in the Bollettino del Comizio 

 agrario di Parma for December, 1868, it is maintained that birds are often 

 injurious to the agriculturist, by preying not only on noxious insects, but 

 sometimes exclusively, or at least by preference, on entomophagous tribes 

 which would otherwise destroy those injurious to cultivated plants. See also 

 articles by Prof. Sabbioni in the Giornale di Agricoltura di Bologna, Novem- 

 ber and December, 1870, and other articles in the same journal of 15th and 

 30th April, 1870. 



* Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of particular 

 branches of agriculture introduces new birds ; but unless in the case of such 

 changes in physical conditions, particular species seem indissolubly attached 

 to particular localities. The migrating tribes follow almost undeviatingly the 

 same precise line of flight in their annual journeys, and establish themselves 

 in the same breeding-places from year to year. The stork is a strong-winged 

 bird and roves far for food, but very rarely establishes new colonies. He is 

 common in Holland, but unknown in England. Not above five or six pairs 

 of storks commonly breed in the suburbs of Constantinople along the Euro- 

 pean shore of the narrow Bosphorus, while — much to the satisfaction of the 

 Moslems, who are justly proud of the marked partiality of so orthodox a bird 

 — dozens of chimneys of the true believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with 

 his nests. 



The appearance of the dove-like grouse, Tetrao paradoxus, or Syrrhaptea 

 Pallasii, in various parts of Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a 

 noticeable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the move- 

 ments and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the 

 steppes of Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or 



