THE FURTHER PROGRESS OF THE CONVENTION 
123 
gress held at London in 1905. But the fact is that only the 
Hungarian Central Office for Ornithology (an institution belong- 
ing directly under the control of the Ministry of Agriculture) 
gave any account of itself at London, a fact which proves 
that the period of 5 years v^as insufficient to cope with the 
difficulties of the question, as experts who had entered into 
the matter with any amount of thoroughness knew at the 
time. 
After this digression let us return to the history of the 
Convention. 
Owing to a dearth of data this sketch cannot pretend to 
cover all the side-issues of the negotiations abroad: con- 
sequently we must confine ourselves to what happened in 
Austria and Hungary, the Governments of which two coun- 
tries continued, partly through the intervention of the Austro- 
Hungarian Foreign Minister, to actively participate in the 
consummation of the cause. 
In 1903 the question of the Convention was a fait ac- 
compli, as far as the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture was 
concerned. A memorial to the Cabinet was ready, containing 
the text of the Convention in the form an Act with the 
necessary arguments to support it.^ In the early part of this 
year the Hungarian Ministry of Justice sent the Ministry of 1903 
1904 
Agriculture a legal report'^ on the Convention and towards 
the end of the same year handed in to the same Ministry 
its final revision* of the text of the Convention. 
But the Convention could not yet be placed on the table 
of the House, for it had to include Croatia as federal State, 
a fact which necessitated the translation of the documents 
» Hung. Min. Agr. No. 845/eln. Feb. 10, 1903. 
^ Hung. Min. Just. No. 38,343/1. M. 11. Jan. 10, 1903. 
» Hung. Min. Just. No. 42,043/1. M. II. Dec. 24, 1903. 
