Aprit 28, 1870] 
of Rouen, the blackbird was shot down without mercy, and 
many a meadow’s turf could be roiled up like a carpet; and 
in this country we had, until lately, our sparrow clubs,which 
paid for little victims at so many a dozen, just as two or three 
hundred years ago some of our pious churchwardens used 
to purchase hedgehogs of truant schoolboys in the rural 
districts, a lamentable increase of pestiferous insects being 
the consequence. The Rey. Charles Kingsley gives us a 
more recent example. In Trinidad, the free negrohas been 
banging away at the small birds, partly for his own plea- 
sure, and partly to supply the London markets and our 
ladies’ hats. What has been the consequence? “ Already 
the turf of the savannah, or public park, close by, is being 
destroyed by hordes of mole-crickets, almost exactly like 
(strange to say) those of our old English meadows; and 
unless something is done to save the birds, the canes and 
other crops will surely suffer intheir turn. A gun-licence 
would be, it seems, both unpopular and easily evaded in 
a wild forest country. A heavy export tax on bird-skins 
has been preferred” (Good Words, April). A single pair 
of swallows, says M. Michelet, carry every week to the 
nest 4,300 caterpillars or coleoptera. The blackbird is 
a notorious insect-eater, and consumes hundreds of 
imperfect insects every day, to say nothing of worms and 
slugs. The common sparrow is a vivacious feeder, and 
somewhat dainty withal, but it makes great havoc with 
young worms and soft insects. All our field birds, in short, 
troublesome and non-melodious as many of them are, rid 
us of millions of fast breeding insects which would other- 
wise do incalculable injury to our vegetation, and could 
not well be destroyed by artificial means. Indeed, we dis- 
turb a natural arrangement when we step in and decimate 
a predatory class without also destroying their victims, 
and therefore it is gratifying to find Mr. Lowe putting a 
check upon amateur sportsmen, who bang away, reckless 
of consequences either to themselves or others. A little 
time ago we agreed to protect our sea-birds, because we 
found they showed us “schooling” fish, and warned our 
seamen from dangerous rocks in misty weather. This 
time our legislation is less direct. We have not hada 
select committee on the sparrow—there are plenty of 
chatterers in the House of Commons who might be “sat 
upon” to advantage ; we have not even anticipated a 
Ministry of Agriculture by investigating the sources of 
injury to growing crops; but we have been moved by 
social advantages, and the bright-eyed broods of field and 
wood will profit by our sense of security and our desire to 
equalise taxation. 
A word on another topic. The rating of woods and 
plantations is threatened. It is part of the very question 
I have so hastily touched upon. Wherever farms are 
very bare of trees, insects always abound. The locust and 
the grasshopper delight in the plain, whilst the smaller 
insects thrive in the young woods that give shelter to their 
enemies. If we do anything to diminish the planting of 
trees, we shall increase our insects and also dry our 
already impoverished soils. We are protecting salmon— 
why should we not protect our woods, and with them our 
birds and our crops? Dean Stanley notes that Jewish 
tradition ascribes to Joshua certain useful regulations as 
to woods—the grazing of cattle therein, the cutting of 
sticks, and the preserving of thinly-planted trees. There 
was wisdom in them all. Watch a bare and a wooded hill 
NATURE 
649 
on a cloudy day, or a well-wooded farm in a dry summer, 
and you will see a difference which need not be described. 
Disafforesting threatens to become as common in the 
nineteenth as enclosuring was in the sixteenth century. 
Are we wise to hasten it ? 
E. GOADBY. 
DR. FELINECK ON METEOROLOGICAL 
OBSERVATIONS 
Anleitung zur Anstellung meteorologischer Beobachtungen 
und Sammlung von Hilfstafeln, Dr. Carl Jelineck. 
Royal 8vo. pp. 193, with 17 figures. (Vienna, 1869. 
London : Williams and Norgate, price 6s.) 
AN COMPARISON between the instructions of M. Carl 
Kreil, the late director of the Austrian Central Office 
for Meteorology and Terrestrial Magnetism, and those now 
issued by his successor, demonstrates steady and sound 
progress in practical meteorology. M. Kreil had to sow 
his seed on uncultivated soil, and was only partially sup- 
plied with the more modern implements of cultivation ; 
Dr. Jelineck, on the contrary, has had before him the 
successive results of nearly a quarter of a century, and 
has profited by the vast experience gained from the 
correspondence carried on during that time between the 
central office and the numerous stations, distributed 
over the wide geographical area of the Austrian empire 
with its striking physical contrasts. No wonder then, 
that Dr. Jelineck’s work, which the author modestly 
calls “a guide to meteorological observations, with par- 
ticular reference to the stations in Austria and Hun- 
gary,” has developed, under his hands, into an excel- 
lent manual of practical meteorology, which will prove, 
in many respects, most valuable to the observers of every 
country. In the instructions of his predecessor such 
important subjects as the employment of the aneroid and 
marine barometers, and of the maximum and minimum 
thermometers, are not discussed at all, and little attention 
is paid to a rigid reduction of the observations. 
The introductory part of the present work treats on the 
following subjects ; general organisation of the system of 
meteorological observations in Austria and Hungary; 
conditions for establishing new stations ; regulations for 
the official correspondence through the post and telegraph 
offices ; local requirements and instrumental equipment 
of stations, with a precise statement of the necessary 
expenditure ; a list of the most recent and important 
works on meteorology published in Germany, England, 
and France ; hours of observation and means for deter- 
mining the true local mean time. 
Then follows a concise and clear description illustrated 
by excellent figures, of the different kinds of barometers 
and aneroids, a discussion of their relative advantages 
and defects, and an exposition of the principal formula 
used in the reductions of the observations, with well- 
selected examples fully worked out, for those observers 
whose mathematical knowledge is deficient. It appears 
that the form of barometer mostly in use at the Austrian 
stations, is that in which there is no provision for adjusting 
the zero of the scale to the fluctuating surface of the 
mercury in the cistern. Hence, only one displacement 
of the index is made for every observation, viz. that at the 
upper surface of the mercurial column, This is undoubt- 
