1912 J Bishop, Birds in the Markets of Southern Europe. 187 



complete the campaign should, with good tactics, complete its 

 success." 



"War on Wood Pigeons. 



The war against wood pigeons was continued in nearly all the 

 southern counties yesterday. 



'Our advice to all farmers who are suffering from the plague of 

 the birds is, "Shoot them." ' Mr. A. G. L. Rogers, of the Intelli- 

 gence Department of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, told 

 a 'Daily Mail' representative. 



' It is best to get at them either at day-break or sunset, and scare 

 them out of their roosting places, or the haunts they flock to for 

 water. Half-measures are not much use; wholesale extermination 

 is the policy if the farmer wishes to preserve his crop. 



'In the north they are not troubled anything like to the same 

 extent. There is not the same temptation as in the south. They 

 flock to the southern counties because there is far more in the 

 shape of food-stuff.' " 



How great is the destruction of small birds at the hands of man 

 in Europe and northern Africa these pages will give an idea, but of 

 the actual number, especially of Skylarks, slaughtered for food no 

 computation is possible. It probably reaches the hundred thou- 

 sand. And this destruction of small birds during the migration 

 for food by the Italians has been going on for years. Mr. E. A. 

 Samuels in "Mammalogy and Ornithology of New England," 

 published in 1863, quotes Frederick de Tschudi, the president of 

 the Agricultural Society of Canton St. Gall, Switzerland, as writing 

 " At the period of their spring migration, and still more in autumn, 

 Italians are seized with a mania for killing small birds." "To 

 form some idea of the slaughter which for weeks together is the 

 chief delight of the people of Italy it is sufficient to mention that 

 in one district on the shores of the Lago Maggiore the number of 

 small birds annually destroyed amounts to between 60,000 and 

 70,000, and that in Lombardy, in one single roccolo, 15,000 birds 

 are often captured daily. In the neighborhood of Bergamo, 

 Verona and Brescia, several millions of birds are slaughtered every 

 autumn." 



In Bird-Lore for July-August, 1907, Mr. Francis H. Herrick 



