[TO THE EDITOR OP THZ "SPECTATOR."]
Sie,—In reference to Mr. J. Challenor Smith's suggested explanation (Spectator, June 18th) of the scarcity of swallows, the following extracts from an article which has recently appeared in the Bulletin de la Societe romande pour in protec- tion des oiseaux provide conclusive evidence.—I am, Sir, &c.,
• i "Italy is, as t were, a bridge over which passes year by yea?
the main body of migratory birds from Central and Southern Europe in search of warmer climes. To cross this narrow bridge, the migrants must concentrate, and Italy thus becomes the field of the greatest activity of bird-hunters. The number of birds captured or killed is appalling. . . . In Udine market the slaughtered birds lie in heaps, in such disorder that the merchant does not attempt to classify them. On an average 5,000 birds a day are sold, chiefly chaffinches, tits, warblers, yellow-hammers, larks, wrens, linnets, and thrushes. The number of birds brought to this one market in a year is estimated at a million. In France, too, the destruction of small birds is equally iniquitous. In one district of the Midi the ' bag ' for a period of only two months was 1,400 finches, 3,000 tits, and 10,000 nightingales. The Societe d'agriculture du Rhone deplores the fact that wagtails are destroyed in the Landes 'by the cartload.' The district of Le Var has anni- hilated in a few years 100,000 redbreasts, and that of Les Beaches-du-Rhone three million swallows. Similarly, in Spain hecatombs of wild birds are killed for food. At Madrid alone, each of the (roughly) 5,000 restaurants of the town serves up five dozen roasted birds—a total of 300,000 birds a day! In Madrid there is not a single sparrow, not a single swallow's nest."
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