Britain, with our Selborne Societies and our Wild
Birds' Protection Acts, find it extremely difficult to understand the
utter indifference displayed by Italians of all classes towards the
feathered race. The whole of the beautiful country with its cypress hedges
and olive groves lies almost mute and lifeless, for on every festival the
fields and lanes are patrolled by bands of _cacciatori_ with dogs and guns
on the look-out for game, if blackbirds and sparrows can be accounted
such. In some districts it is even dangerous for pedestrians to use the
roads on a Sunday, for fear of a stray bullet, since all, as a rule, fire
recklessly at any creature within and out of range. Nor is this senseless
war of extermination carried on merely with guns, for trapping is used
extensively, and very ingenious and elaborate are some of the arts
employed in this wretched quest. Every country house has its _uccellare_,
or snare for the securing of small birds for the table, whilst many of the
parish priests in the mountain districts add to their scanty incomes by
catching the fledglings which the young peasants sell in the neighbouring
market. The result is what might only naturally be expected--a scarcity of
birds and an almost complete absence of song, for the whole countryside
has been practically denuded of blackbirds and thrushes; even the
nightingale has escaped destruction rather on account of its nocturnal
habits than of its tiny size and exquisite notes. It is positively
sickening to observe the quantities of slaughtered wild birds in an
Italian market at any season of the year, for the work of devastation
proceeds apace equally in spring time. Basketfuls of thrushes and
blackbirds, and strings of smaller varieties--linnets, sparrows, robins,
finches, even the diminutive gold-finches, most beautiful, most gay, and
most innocent of all songsters--are being hawked about by leathern-lunged
_contadini_, who, alas! always manage to find customers in plenty. No
matter how melodious, how lovely, or how useful to the farmer a bird may
be, no Italian, high or low, seems to have any sense or appreciation of
its merits except as an article of food; it is merely a thing that
requires to be caught, killed, cooked and eaten, and Providence has
decreed its existence for no other purpose; even gold-finches in the eye
of an Italian look better served on a skewer than when they are flying
round the thistle-heads, uttering their bright musical notes