174 
THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS IN HUNGARY 
The Future. 
Those who are not initiated into the secrets of the science 
do not remark the continual decrease of permanent non- 
migrating useful birds whose work the woods and garden 
cannot dispense with, but they may notice the increase of worms. 
Popular fancy has always considered titmice to be per- 
manent residents: the latter are on the decrease; in fact they 
have entirely disappeared from places where once they existed 
in large quantities and did their work. Where do they go? 
These too appear from time to time in the m.arkets of the 
South, where they are sold by the dozen — for culinary purposes! 
The next and natural question is: what drives these winged 
creatures to migrate, or rather to emigrate? The answer, as 
we know, is a very simple one, viz. that there birds nest 
in hollows, whereas modern forestry and gardening does not 
tolerate old trees, which with their hollows allured birds that 
lay in hollows, and so has rendered the same literally homeless: 
to save themselves they must wander! This point was empha- 
sised long ago by Alfred Brehm. 
Homeless too have become our noblest song birds, most 
of them insect-eaters, that make their nests in bushes, for 
modern farming requires clear fields and so cannot tolerate 
the presence, here and there, of bushes and shrubs, the 
homes of those winged creatures which are the unpaid and 
faithful guardians of the crops. 
All these circumstances prevailed upon Baron Hans Ber- 
LEPSCH, that truly ideal champion of the bird-world, to set 
down as the line to be followed what may be expressed in a 
short sentence: „Keep what we can''. 
And he has come to the conclusion that we must restore 
to useful birds all that the modern system has deprived them 
of. But as the progress of economy precludes a return to a 
