102 WILD BIKB PEOTECTION 



auxiliaries to cultivators are the various species of 

 owls, and I can safely challenge anybody to produce 

 evidence of any counterbalancing injury that can be 

 justly laid to their charge. 



XXVII 



It is satisfactory to note that the International Confer- 

 wild Bird ence which assembled in Paris in 1895, on 

 Protection ^ i nv it a ti O n of the French Government, to 

 consider the best means of concerted action for the pro- 

 tection of birds useful to agriculture, is bearing some 

 fruit. The executive committee of the International 

 Exhibition about to open in Turin have come to the 

 wise decision to withhold all rewards from engines 

 designed for the capture of such birds. There is some 

 hope that a similar resolution may be adopted by the 

 Commissioners of the Exhibition to be held in Paris in 

 1900. This is well, for in no other country have insec- 

 tivorous birds been brought so near extinction as in 

 Italy and France. The Conference referred to was the 

 outcome of the conviction that, unless something was 

 done to arrest the process of extermination, insect pests 

 would shortly assume intolerable proportions. The 

 delegates, representing every country in Europe except 

 Turkey, where nobody thinks of slaughtering small 

 birds, had for its president the late Prime Minister, 

 M. Meline, and adopted a series of resolutions, nearly 

 all of which the British delegates had the gratification 

 of announcing as already in statutory force in these 



