THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS IN HUNGARY 
147 
consequently called upon the President of the Hungarian 
Scientific Committee entrusted with the organisation of the 
Congress, the writer of the present sketch, to prepare a 
suitable plan. This was how the Hungarian Central Office of I894. 
Ornithology was instituted, in 1894. 
This Institute had at once two tasks to perform, viz. the 
scientific development of the ornithology of Hungary and the 
thorough investigation of the phenomenon of migration. It is 
in the latter field particularly that, during the last ten years, 
the Institute has, internationally, taken a foremost place. 
It is quite natural that many questions were addressed by 
the Government and still more by the general public to an 
Institute devoted solely to the development of ornithology, 
the institute giving an opinion and information on every point. 
The decrease in the number of birds so generally felt 
was by many people considered to be in causal interdepend- 
ence on the continual increase of insects, against which the 
State, roused particularly by the great blows dealt by the 
phylloxera plague, was already fighting with the aid of an 
institute, the Royal Hungarian Entomological Station. 
But the discussion of the Game Laws (Act X of 1883) and 
the Act dealing with agriculture and field-police (Act XII of 1894) 
had made it clear that there was every need of works which 
should give the general public and farmers a true picture of 
birds and their life and thus acquaint them with the enorm- 
ous economic significance of these pretty winged creatures. 
This necessity was all the more burning, as even in the 
civilised West, where the cause of the protection of birds had 
been espoused with great warmth, there was no concealing 
the want of objective knowledge on the part of society ; and 
this, notwithstanding the fact that, particularly in Germany, 
there existed a very advanced scientific and popular literature, 
which, however, laid most emphasis on the natural-historical 
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