86 
HISTORICAL PART 
I beg to enclose a copy of the German Birds Protection 
Act". 
This proposition was forwarded by the Hungarian Minister 
of Agriculture, in a note (No. 19,001 /IV: 1890, May 9) 
addressed to the Hungarian Minister of Public Instruction, 
who was entrusted with the direct organisation of the Con- 
gress; and this was the action which secured the inclusion 
of the question of bird-protection in the agenda of the Con- 
gress that meet in 1891, and its discussion by Class IV that 
was organised for the purpose. 
With this the cause of international protection, like the 
rock of Sisyphus, rolled back to the spot where, in 1875, 
Count Gyula Andrassy and Visconti Venosta had placed 
it and had commenced rolling it uphill. 
To the history of the Second International Ornithological 
Congress, however, belongs, as an organic part, the supplem- 
ent ^ showing the position at the time in Hungary of economic 
ornithology, i. e. of the cause of bird-protection, the essential 
parts of which were as follows: 
The protection of useful birds is provided for, in the first 
place, by the Game Laws (Act XX of 1883), of which, 
§ 9 definitely forbids the shooting of singing birds, while 
§ 30 enacts that „whosoever destroys the nests or steals 
the eggs of birds (except those of noxious birds) shall be 
punished with a fine ranging between one and 100 flo- 
rins", and 
§ 12 enacts that the shooting of noxious birds is per- 
missible at all periods ; stariings, however, may be shot only 
in vineyards or orchards. 
The law dealing with the field police, which was then, 
in 1891, only on the table of the House, was still more 
^ Compiled by Izidor MAday. 
