THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS IN HUNGARY 
cultivate this particular branch, especially as the systematic 
part of ornithology, which almost entirely dropped the biolog- 
ical basis and devoted itself to formalism, had become very 
sensibly one-sided. 
The creation of a work which, treating birds in the light 
of their agricultural significance, should satisfy expert ornith- 
ologists, give thorough information to farmers and act upon 
every grade of farm-labourer, was indeed a difficult task, but 
not an impossible one, seeing that, apart from technicalities, 
the highly important language question caused no particular 
difficulty. 
The Hungarian Central Office for Ornithology was then 
attached to the Ministry of Public Instruction, its maintenance 
was secured by the Budget: so it first of all sounded its 
natural superior, but without success. There were doubts as 
to the text and the illustrations. It is undeniable that the 
Ministry had, in the past, had many disagreeable experiences, 
which obliged it to reserve in dealing with new undertakings. 
The cause of the international protection ,of birds, however, 
developed, and, after the International Congress held at 
Budapest in 1891, followed a course which aimed at the 
creation, on a concrete basis, of an international convention 
for the protection of birds, i. e. the emphasising of general 
principles was given up and its place taken by a tendency 
which laid the chief stress on the compilation of schedules 
of useful and noxious birds. After half a century's work we 
had arrived at the point from which Baldamus in 1845 and 
1856, had desired to start. 
It is only natural that, after the preliminaries, a true appre- 
ciation of the cause of bird-protection could be expected only 
in the Agricultural Ministry of Hungary, particularly because., 
in the international negotiations, as we know, it was the 
Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture which from the very begin- 
