68 
HISTORICAL PART 
Another great fault of the Congress was that it did not 
take the preHminaries, i. e. the historical development of the 
cause, as its startingpoint, though it might veiy easily have 
done so at Vienna, the seat of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign 
Ministry which for years had directed the international negoti- 
ations and was responsible for the Declaration" of 1875 
(v. supra), by which, as Prof. Giglioli announced, his 
Government were determined to abide. This „Declaration", 
taken in connexion with the significant discussions and 
resolution of the International Agricultural and Forestry Con- 
gress of 1873, would have formed a fitting basis for the 
work of the first International Ornithological Congress, a 
basis on which it could have progressed and created. Instead 
of doing so, however, the Congress discussed organisations 
to comprise the whole world, organisations of which Dr. Pollen, 
the delegate of Holland, very aptly remarked that they were 
mere suppositions and not things that could be practically 
realised. 
The only practical result, therefore, was not the compro- 
mise but the proposal which desired the appointment of a 
committee with instructions to present or carefully elaborated 
scheme to the next Congress. 
The Capital of Hungary, Budapest, was decided on as 
the scene of the Second International Ornithological Congress. 
Among ornithologists this Congress is known by the epithet 
of „the best prepared." 
To arrange the preliminaries for this Congress should 
have been the task of the Committee formed at Vienna (the 
„ Permanent International Ornithological Committee", abbre- 
viated to „PIOC"); its duty should have been to create a 
network of observatories all over the world for the obser- 
vation of birds. The international organisation of the protection 
of birds was also within the sphere of the Committee, since 
