50 
HISTORICAL PART 
At the next meeting Tschudi in the name of the Com- 
mittee proposed the following compromise: 
„The Congress of Agriculturists and Foresters moves that 
the Imperial Austrian Government be requested to secure the 
protection of birds useful to agriculture by means of treaties 
to be made, on the basis of the following points, with the 
other States of Europe; 
I. The taking and killing of insect-eating birds shall be 
absolutely forbidden. 
II. It were desirable that a committee to be composed of 
international experts should compile an accurate list of the 
birds to be protected. 
III. The taking of birds living for the most part on 
seeds to be allowed, except during a close season lasting 
from March 1 till Sept. 15. 
IV. Fowling with snares, traps and bird-lime to be abso- 
lutely forbidden. 
V. The taking of eggs and nestlings as well as the 
destruction of nests (except those of noxious birds) to be 
prohibited. The compilation of the list of noxious birds to 
be the work of the Committee. 
VI. The sale of insect-eating birds, either alive or dead, 
to be forbidden, that of other birds also during the close 
season: this prohibition to be extended to birds' nests and eggs. 
VII. Exceptions may be made in cases of scientific requir- 
ements and in other special cases. 
The course of the discussion has clearly proved that the 
defective knowledge of the modes of life, but in particular 
of the feeding, of the various species of birds rendered har- 
mony of opinion, even among the expert ornithologists, im- 
possible; the point of divergence, a divergence that must 
in the future only increase, is the list of birds and the 
applications of the conceptions of usefulness and noxiousness 
