PRELIMINARIES 
29 
principally with the object of gaining territory and that this 
point of view was the cause of the draining of inland seas 
and marshes; further we know that in more than one place 
forests and undergrowths have been sacrificed to this end. 
Primitive agriculture has been gradually diminishing in 
extent, in wide districts it has entirely disappeared, particul- 
arly pasture and meadow husbandry; the latter, once the 
„ nurse of the people", is absolutely a thing of the past. 
The report which the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture 
in 1904 presented ta Parliament, as a preliminary to the 
incorporation of the International Convention for the Protection 
of birds useful to Agriculture, characterises the spreading 
tendency of agriculture and its results in the following words: 
„The tendency pursued was to gain ever increasing 
territory for agriculture strictly so called and its branches, 
i. e. corngrowing, meadow cultivation, gardening, the pro- 
duction of crops to be hoed and fodder etc. The greater part of 
the re-gained territory was taken from water, forests or pristine 
pastures; and as farming changed in great part according 
to the products, not only the general aspect but the nature 
of whole districts became transformed." 
„The most striking and, from the point of view of eco- 
nomic interest, the most sensible change was in the relation 
between animals and the vegetable world. The equihbrium 
inseparable from the primitive state of Nature took another 
form not only in the new territories lately handed over to 
the cultivator but indirectly in other parts also." 
„The disappearance of meadows due to the regulation of 
the rivers completely revolutionised the conditions of life of 
the animals which formed part and parcel of them, particul- 
arly the fishes and birds. The same is true of the draining 
of lakes and marshlands too." 
„The extermination of primeval forests and the restriction 
