16 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
ON THE APPEARANCE AND BREEDING 
OF PASTOR ROSEUS IN THE PROVINCE OF VERONA. 
By Epoarpo pr Berta, 
Member of the Royal Venetian Institute.* 
[The following is the concluding portion of a memoir entitled “Le 
Cavallette e lo Storno roseo in Provincia di Verona nell’ anno 1875,” read 
at a meeting of the Royal Venetian Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, 
29th of November, 1875, and printed in the ‘ Atti’ of that body (vol. ii., 
ser. 5). The former part, relating to a wonderful and destructive visitation 
of Locusts—with which, in popular estimation, the appearance of the Rose- 
coloured Starlings was connected—we have been compelled for want of 
space to omit. The reader will do well to compare the following interesting 
account with that given by the Marchese O. Antinori, and translated by 
Mr. Sclater for ‘The Zoologist’ in 1857 (1st series, pp. 5668-5672).—Eb.] 
THE Rose-coloured Pastor, Pastor roseus, is a most formidable 
enemy of locusts. It has been asserted+ that as its occurrence 
is deemed in many countries no fallacious indication of their 
appearance, so on any arrival of such a scourge, these birds are 
seen by the hundred or the thousand to follow the hordes which 
devastate the country. 
Without wishing to believe that this was our case,—that is. to 
say, that to the invasion of the locusts was solely due the arrival, 
as before stated, of the Rose-coloured Starling in the Veronese 
Province, and especially at Villafranca, {—I believe lL shall not be 
far from the truth in thinking that the presence of the Acridium 
in the interior of the country, and in quantities so immeasurable, 
determined the stay here of the numberless troops in which 
these wandering birds reached us, having been originally perhaps 
more likely directed towards another part of Europe. 
Whatever we may think, however, it was a sufficiently strange 
fact, at which all naturally marvelled, that at the very time of 
the invasion of the locusts there should appear so great a 
number of Rose-coloured Starlings as we believe could not be 
reckoned at less than from twelve to fourteen thousand individuals, 
* Translated by William Long, F.S.A., and communicated by the Rey. A. C. 
Smith, M.A. 
+ Brehm, ‘La Vita Degli Animali’ (Italian translation), iii., p. 324. 
+ The chief town of the administrative district, on the Verona and Modena 
Railway, 17 kilometres from that city. 
