PIRBY : BIRDS V. INSECTS. 



335 



mountains ; the beaver from the rivers. But it has been especially hostile to 

 birds ; the hospitable thickets and sheltering copses diminish annually ; man 

 forces onward the boundaries of his domain ; he renders the, as yet, unculti- 

 vated soil subservient to his interests, and draws from it rich harvests. 

 Large tracts of woodland are cleared to supply the wants of an increasing 

 population, and the heavy demands of industry. The large trees formerly 

 left standing in the midst of a field, in which numberless small animals 

 found a refuge, are made away with, or replaced sometimes by small fruit 

 trees. Long rows of hedges, the hiding-place of a whole host of birds, meet 

 with the like fate ; and these, too, were of other use, for they would attract 

 quantities of caterpillars, which would feed on their green leaves, and thus 

 spare the orchards. All the little nooks so useful to birds, both as places of 

 nidification and hunting grounds, disappear one by one. In woods, the mis- 

 take of cutting down right and left old trees full of decayed cavities, has 

 been, unfortunately understood and appreciated too late, and thereby 

 numbers of the best Insectivora have been deprived of commodious nesting 

 places ; unavailing regrets from those incessantly exposed to the havoc of 

 wood insects will follow on the disappearance, for years to come, of their 

 best and most active allies of the forest. United, the causes we have just 

 referred to would alone be sufficient to explain the heavy and sensible dimi- 

 nution of small birds ; but there are others of considerable consequence, for 

 instance, the frequent netting and shooting by man, and the destruction of 

 nests by children and cats. In some countries no nest is out of reach, and 

 none are left unplundered ; and it is especially the most useful destroyers of 

 insects which are plundered in quantities, such as the titmouse, the chaffinch, 

 the Vv^arbler, and the redbreast. Nightingales in some places have become 

 so exceedingly scarce, that in spots formerly enlivened by their songs every 

 spring, they have not been heard or seen for many years. 



But the cause whiqh exercises a still more fatal inffiience on the dimi- 

 nution of our most useful birds of passage, is the exterminating hunt they 

 are subjected to on the part of the Italians. It is a well-known fact that at 

 the period of their spring migration, and still more in autumn, the Italians 

 are seized with a kind of mania for killing small birds. Men of all ages and 

 conditions, nob Hi, merchants, priests, artisans, and peasants, all abandon their 

 usual avocations, to attack, like banditti, the troops of passing visitors. By 

 the river-side, in the fields, all around is heard the report of fire-arms ; nets 

 are laid, traps set, twigs besmeared with bird-lime hang on every bush. On 

 every hill adapted to the purpose is placed a sort of trap (roccolo ) full of owls 



