270 The Great World's Farm 



ernment keepers were actually under orders to destroy the 

 woodpeckers, whose special office it is to rid the trees of 

 beetle-grubs, and the cuckoos, which devour the hairy 

 caterpillars which no other birds will touch, and so on. 



And the Germans have not been the only, or even the 

 chief, offenders. They have killed their own birds, and 

 have suffered for it. But the Italians have done worse; 

 for they have waged deadly war upon the birds which are 

 the common property of Europe. They have a perfect 

 mania for slaughtering small, insect-eating birds, and 

 unhappily they have special opportunities of gratifying it, 

 as large flocks of migrants pass through this, to them 

 inhospitable, land every year on their way to and from the 

 south. Considering the way in which they were received, 

 one wonders why they did not choose some other route; 

 but the force of habit seems to be too strong for them, 

 and their ranks have been thinned year after year in the 

 most fatal manner. Not even the swallows were allowed 

 to pass unmolested; for to catch them, by floating hooks 

 baited with flies in the air, seems to have been considered 

 a particularly fascinating pastime. 



For months the chief delight of the population was in 

 catching birds, and several million were killed regularly 

 each autumn in the neighborhood of Verona alone. Larks 

 are among the most useful of the insect-eating birds, and 

 so entirely harmless that even the farmer has no fault to 

 find with them. Yet neither their usefulness nor their 

 harmlessness were sufficient to save them from persecution. 

 Unluckily for themselves, and we may add, for Europe, 

 they had chosen Sicily as one of the places at which to 

 break their journey, and they could hardly have done 

 worse. The Sicilians knew when to expect them, for they 



