V 
494 BIRD-LIFE. 
caught. He will net a whole reed-bed at night, where 
these birds roost during their migration, treading hun¬ 
dreds in the mud underfoot, whence he extracts them the 
next day! He knows not the meaning of hospitality or 
love. As soon as the birds of passage arrive the “Boccolo ” 
takes his stand on every hill, a net is placed in every 
bush: it is all one to him what he vCatches, whether the 
wanderer be great or small, useful or hurtful; death to 
all is the immutable sentence, from the Thrush or Bed¬ 
wing to the Goldcrest. “By the ‘Langensee’ Lake,” 
says Tschudi, “there is an annual destruction of some sixty 
thousand warblers; at Bergamo, Verona, Chiavenna, and 
Brescia, they are captured by millions: most of these 
birds are little creatures which, in our part of the world, 
no one would dream of harming, and which would be 
the rather preserved, on account of their song.” I do not 
call this fowling; it is a terrible, brutalising sin against 
Nature; and this system of murder is permitted, be it 
remembered, the whole year round: in the neighbourhood 
even of the nest the horsehair noose is set; thus young 
and old fall alike victims to the greediness of the Italian. 
No wonder, then, that the bird flees his home. One may 
wander for miles in the “land of song” and not meet 
with a single warbler ! 
Italians, as well as those who think like them in other 
lands, who read these pages, may bear in mind that they 
are sinning against the civilization of our time, and that 
they hold themselves up to the opprobrium of all right- 
thinking men, if they pervert a delightful and noble 
sport, making a misuse of it to murder and destroy, 
but never using to protect. 
