Morning journal and courier., 1881-08-05
Small Birds in France.
Wholesale md BarbarOus Way ina Which They are Destroyed.
 TFrrr, tha palI Mall

They are Destroyed
 From the Pall Mall Gazette.]
 Many Englishmen will learn with consider able satisfaction that strong feeling is be- ing stirred abroad against the wanton mas acre of small birds. As long as the birds are netted and shot to perfectly unlimited extent in France and Italy on their way to and from their winter quarters, our own
 vent their diminution even in this country,
 and the case is of coursemuch worse with
 countries like Austria and Germany
 According to two articles just published
 in the Cologne Gazette, which are obviously written by some one well acquainted with the South of France, the destruction of the small birds is pursued at all times of the year in the most wholesale and barbarous
 manner. The two seasons in which shooting licenses are granted are in the North of
 France from the beginning of August to
 about the end of January in the South, from
 the middle of August to the same date-a license costing about 22 shillings. But no license is required for shooting in small private enclosures, surrounded by a wall that is in the vast mass of ordinary gardens;
 and here it is that, in the absence of larger game, small birds are trapped and shot with out let or hindrance all the year round.
 The use of nets in these inclosures is indeed
 forbidden; but as no garde champetre can
 enter them without special order the pro-
 hibition has little or no effect. In the South
 of France autumn is the chief time for a general massacre of birds of passage; but
 when spring comes, and the travellers are flying north again, they are shot down in numbers as they gain the French coasts from the Mediterranean. Among otner in genious artifces for the destruction of sn,al birds the system known as the poste VIII hold it's own for deliberate ingenuity. It isN sort of hut about five yards square, half
 hidden in the ground, and when possible,
 surrounded by evergreen shrubs One side is made of wooden blanks, in which holes are punched for shooting through. This hut is built at a few yards distance from group of fir trees, or, in default of these, posts | stuck in the ground with dry branches fasten-
 ed to the top (cjnae0ots is the Provencal term) to wave in the air ; and under the branches number of little cages, containing decoy birds are hung. Most of the latter have had their eyes put out especially songsters, such as finches, linnets, etc, which otherwise
 would be too timid to sing amid their strange
 surroundings. The poor blind things pour forth their songs to the rays of the rising
 sun, which they feel but cannot see, and at tract their fellows from the neighboring woods These blind birds are to be had in hundreds at any bird fancier's in the South of France as from to francs apiece. Some postes have only dozen or so of these de- | coy birds to do the work, but others have | hundreds, rich owners sometimes spend | ing 1000 to LOGO francs Q year in their pur- chase and keep. At sunrise such ''sportsmen"
 arrange themselves comfortably, we are told, | at their postes, with rugs, a sofa, stove | sometimes, if the air is chilly, an apparatus for making coffee. Frequently ladies who
 delight in the pastime are of the party. The
 cages are hung up and the birds begin their | song. The gun-muzzles appear at the aper- | lures of the hut, and soon as & bird Is seen | on the top of the cimeous, drawn clear against the morning sky, down he goes, of | ba T1lau ha 9hnOtInO goes on till 9 or 10 o'clock. If many ''sports- men, are at work, twenty or thirty birds are sometimes brought down at volley. Good postes yield in the best often from POO to 300 birds day, of every sort-thrushes, night
 ingales linnets, woodpeckers, yellowham-
 mers, blackbirds, robins, crossbills, field
 fares and larks. Large and small are all shot
 down alike; the sweetest singers are not
 spared. for all, without exception, are eaten.
 Nor is the poste the only expedient for get ting within shot of the small birds. The agachoun is tower, or sort of wooden scaf- folding, with little platform on the top,
 from which flights of birds can be seen and
 fired at as they pass but there is an element of uncertainty about this, and it is more fatiguing than the poste and hence less popular.
 The number of birds that are netted is, perhaps, even greater than of those which are shot Thrusbes and nightingalas are
 caught by the hundreds in the teso sort of
 net which is spread along the sides of mar row, well-wooded lane, and, in combination with the inevitable decoy-birds, proves ex- traordinarily effective The means of de- struction are so varied and ingenious that it 1 is only wonderful that there are any small
 birds left. The comparative absence of bird l life, which strikes traveller in the South of
 Europe so disagreeably, needs, at all events,
 no further explanation. Swallows alone
 have been tolerably exempt from persecution not because they are less esteemed by the l jaded palates of the south, but because of the I extreme difficulty of shooting them. Powder in France is so dear that a swallow
 is literally not worth powder and shot. They
 might, indeed, be needed but this is for
 bidden in their case by law. M. Guibert, coun-
 cilor- general of the department of the Vau-
 cluse, did, indeed. get this prohibition an-
 nulled for time by way of doing his electors
 a good turn but people soon found them
 selves threatened with perfect plague of l gnats and mosquitoes, and the law was re- established-not, however, before many l thousands of swallows had been taken by the 1 marshy Rhone banks. Very similar has
 been the experience of Switzerland, where | swallows are now protected-almost too late, however, to repair the mischief they have dopa-hy haavv finHG