546
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
usefulness, is far less injurious to them than the removal of their resting and breeding-places, which is most intimately connected with the methods of cultivation common with us. The eye follows miles of the most luxurious soil turned into fertile fields, without meeting a tree or a bush, not to speak of hedges or groves. Every foot of land is ploughed over, and even the shade of the single trees along the roadways is regarded with jealousy. In our cultivated woods, especially in those upon which the forester looks with satisfaction, it is not much better. No old tree disturbs the regularity of the growing thickets ; no knotty, half-decayed veteran, rich in hollows and hiding-places, is tolerated in the midst of the young wood, and that ready for felling. We calculate also here, and miss our mark as before. The old orchard tree does not bear enough fruit, it is true, to compensate for the loss of grain occasioned by its shade; the hedge, tolerated formerly as the home of the partridge, does not yield fuel or brush sufficient to show a profit; the grove in the midst of the fields disturbs the cultivation of the adjacent land; the half- rotten veteran in the forest is a loss to the woodman; but the tree and the hedge or thicket served various birds as dwelling and shelter, as breeding and setting-places, and amply repaid their maintenance, yielding a much larger profit than many cultivators of forest and land seem to think possible. All birds attach themselves to their breeding-places in especial, and to their roosts with great tenacity, and, driven from them only with difficulty, when they are no longer disturbed, are sure to return in a short time ; but if these resorts are destroyed, they leave the unfriendly land and emigrate. To this fact, proven by frequent observation, I lay the decrease of our useful birds. Our forests and fields are each year deprived of more and more appropriate breeding-places for birds, and thus the latter diminish constantly in number.”
“ What measures,” he says, “ are now to be taken for the protection of those birds useful to the cultivator of the soil ? The answer is certainly : Onl} 7 those which promise actual results. The first of all practical measures I consider to be the general instruction of the people in regard to the nature and habits of our own animals, and especially of our birds ; the improvement and development of instruction in the natural sciences; the introduction of a more or less extended course of natural history and botany in all our primary and other schools, dealing particularly with the usefulness of plants and animals ; the assistance and incitement of all rational exertions on the part of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals; the diffusion of general information on this subject by presentation of good works by the governments and by all associations for the general good, especially the distribution of a concise text-book with