Recently published Ornithological Works. 89 
3. The importance of collecting further information on 
the origin of our domestic animals. 
For urging these three subjects on the attention of the 
authorities, M. Oustalet will, we are sure, receive the cordial 
thanks of every member of the B. O. U. But in some in¬ 
stances we think that M. Oustalet goes too far in his general 
defence of nearly every species. In extolling the supposed 
benefits conferred by the House-Sparrow, and especially their 
vast utility in the United States, he writes of a date no more 
recent than 1869, and is evidently in complete ignorance of 
the entire revulsion of feeling in America as regards this bird. 
For him all the voluminous literature on the Sparrow question, 
and the general consensus of opinion that it is an unmitigated 
evil, not only in America, but also in New Zealand, has appa¬ 
rently been written in vain. On the other hand, we quite 
agree with M. Oustalet and with M. Crette de Falluel that 
the Golden Oriole, generally condemned in France as a bird 
destructive to fruits, especially to cherries, really feeds 
both itself and its young during the summer almost ex¬ 
clusively on insects. We were sorry to see this notion, which 
we must consider a grave error, sanctioned and propagated 
by one of the new groups of birds in the British Museum of 
Natural History, where a male Golden Oriole is mounted, 
bearing two cherries to his mate, which is sitting on her 
nest. 
The injury inflicted on many species of birds by the numer¬ 
ous lines of telegraph-wires which now stretch across Europe 
is incontestable ; but, for all that, we cannot abolish aerial 
lines. One use of electricity, which M. Oustalet mentions, 
is new to us. It appears that in some parts of France a 
dead tree is encircled with a band of copper connected by a 
wire with a battery, and when the branches are covered with 
birds a shock is administered which makes them fall like ripe 
fruit. The selection of a dead tree by the proprietor is in¬ 
telligible, and shows that although on sporting he is bent, 
he has a frugal mind; but the reason for choice of a dead tree 
by the perchers is less obvious. 
