92 
HISTORICAL PART 
the Passata. These instruments may be seen in every likely 
spot, particularly in Upper Italy, and are of all sizes. 
The largest kind, which embraces every kind of taking, 
is more like a colony; it may be found in the district be- 
tween the Lago Maggiore and the Lago di Lugano, and covers 
an area of from 1 — square kilometres. Besides the pavi- 
lion of the owner there are permanent lodgings for the 
fowlers. Beside the catching apparatuses tall, reversible poles 
tower towards heaven: on these, in small cages, are the 
blinded decoy-birds which are to entice their feathered rela- 
tives from a height. 
Among the poor blinded creatures were goldfinches, linnets, 
greenfinches, red-breasts and finches — occasionally the rare 
ortolan also — accentors, sparrows and thrushes. 
Although it was late autumn already, the picture was as 
follows: one cast of the roccolo took 100 goldfinches, then 
another (repeatedly) 100 thrushes, and 50—60 chaffinches; 
then 17 accentors and 21 willow wrens. An ordinary morn- 
ing's takings were 500 birds; but in September the ordinary 
bag was up to 2000 — on one day no less than 800 red- 
breasts. If we take an average of 200 birds for the season 
lasting 2V,, months, at this one spot no less than 15,000 
small birds must have lost their lives. So we can comprehend 
that if we take the whole of Italy the number of victims 
amounts to millions; and if we add that the same system is 
in vogue in Greece and Spain, we see that the millions must 
be multiplied. 
Bird-catching with smaller instruments, particularly with 
iime-twigs, is in vogue in the whole of Italy, in Sicily, Corsica, 
the South of France, Algiers and Tunis. Everywhere it is 
Europeans who practise the custom: Arabs, namely, protect 
birds. These lesser systems too are destructive and claim as 
victims the most useful of our feathered friends, viz. red- 
