OCTOBER 227 



the green woodpecker; for these even the French 

 peasant wife, culinary adept as she usually is, avails 

 not to render palatable. During those three weeks we 

 were almost constantly in the open air; yet in all our 

 walks and drives I saw but one song- thrush, and that 

 had a broken wing ; and I never saw a blackbird. 



In another part of these random notes ^ I have 

 recorded the result of the conference which, at the 

 instance of the French Government, was held in Paris 

 in 1895 to devise international co-operation for the 

 protection of birds useful to agriculture. A protocol 

 was then agreed to binding the States represented 

 (I think all European governments sent delegates, 

 except Turkey, Bulgaria, and Montenegro) to certain 

 protective measures. The British Government, which 

 the late Mr. Howard Saunders and myself had the 

 honour of representing, declined to conform to these 

 measures, which had been anticipated by our own 

 more stringent Wild Birds Protection Acts, and further 

 regulations were uncalled for in a country where small 

 birds are not killed for food. The Italian Government, 

 also, stood out from the agreement, not, as her Minister 

 explained, in the opinion that protective measures were 

 not urgently required in the interest of agriculture, but 

 because the traffic in small birds is so universal in Italy, 

 the trade of bird-catching so long established, and the 

 numbers consumed as food so enormous, that any 

 attempt to suppress the practice would create a 

 revolution. 



We had a foretaste in the summer of 1917 of what 



' Memoriei of the Months, fifth series, pp. 213-18. 



