CHAPTER I. 



USEFUL OR HARMFUL ? 



THE Hungarian Central Office for Ornithology was 

 instituted in 1804, in accordance with a scheme submitted 

 to the Ministry of Agriculture by Mr. Otto Herman, 

 then a member of the Hungarian Parliament. 



The rapid progress of economical affairs in the 

 nineteenth century, particularly in its second half, had a 

 perceptible influence upon the position occupied by the 

 bird and insect fauna, a change which was felt in 

 agriculture, and led to the formation of a new branch 

 of science ornithologia oeconomica. 



The Hungarian Central Office for Ornithology took 

 the new branch in hand, after its transfer from the 

 sphere of the Ministry of Public Instruction to that of 

 the Ministry of Agriculture, where M. de Daranyi 

 assigned an important place to practical experimental 

 methods as a complement to strict science. 



In the meantime Baron Hans von Berlepsch of Seebach 

 developed his system for the protection and propagation 

 of the most useful birds, the main points of which were 

 the feeding and providing with nesting opportunities of 

 such birds. Thereby bird protection was diverted into a 

 rational direction, which met with hearty sympathy on 

 the part of M. de Daranyi; consequently the Hungarian 

 Central Office for Ornithology included this branch of 

 ornithology in the work it set itself to do. 



The course followed by rational bird-protection in 

 Hungary is as follows. It starts with the idea that 



