55 



A crumb of comfort lies in the fact that the customs we now 

 so deplore in Italy were pretty general all over Germany 150 

 years ago. A book published about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century — Naumann : Der Vogelsteller — gives explicit instruc- 

 tions for the taking of almost every kind of bird, explains many 

 methods still in vogue in Southern Europe — some of them very 

 cruel — describes the table merits of different species, and even 

 recommends the most approved mode of burning out the eyes of 

 call birds. So let us not abandon hope. 



FRANCE. 



A noteworthy instance of the failure of the 1902 Convention, 

 so far as France is concerned, occurred in the Basses Pyrenees 

 in the spring of 1908. Yielding to representations made by 

 communal Mayors, the Prefect extended the open season, 

 nominally for the hunting of Larks, with the result that all small 

 birds were mercilessly persecuted until late spring. 0^ving to 

 the poaching proclivities of the French peasant — who generally 

 has an old gun, ready loaded, handy — in some Departments 

 kiUing goes on almost throughout the year. 



In the Departments of the Centre, larks are taken in enormous 

 numbers in drag nets at night, and in horsehair nooses. In the 

 south, especially in the Lot-et-Garonne, millions of insectivorse 

 are taken in nets and nooses — Warblers, Larks, Swallows, and 

 also Goldfinches. M. Henri de Parville in Le Correspondent, 

 June 10, 1892, states that in two communal forests of Meuthe-et- 

 Moselle, there were destroyed in a season a total of 15,544 birds, 

 of which 13,999 might rank as useful insect-eaters. These include 

 10,015 Warblers, Nightingales, Robins, Redstarts, Wrens, and 

 Goldcrests, 2900 Tits, 1180 Blackbirds and Thrushes. The 

 Journal des Dehats, April 30, 1908, pubUshes an article quoting 

 M. Xavier Raspail, who opines that the unusual meteorologic 

 phenomena of 1907 are not more responsible for the dearth of 

 birds this year than the deplorable destruction which increases 

 despite the Convention of 1902. He continues : — 



" The weakness, the culpable complaisance of the administration, will 

 do more for the extinction of birds than the weather. In 1906 in Loir-et- 

 Cher, tmder pretext of hunting Larks, thousands of small birds were 

 destroyed, and picked up in sacksful and sold at 25 to 30 centimes a dozen. 

 One peasant declared that he alone had taken a hundred dozen, and, 

 as he could only dispose of half, the remainder had been thrown into the 

 maniire. If one reflects that these appalling hectacombs are effected 

 in the east, centre, and south of France, and in Italy, during the spring 

 and avitumn migration, one may expect to see, in the near future, the dis- 

 appearance of those birds which are the best auxiliaries to the prosperity 



