"Not long since, in the neighborhood of Ronen and in the valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larvae, infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every herbaceous root was consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily loosened, might have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet." The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller birds is, in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the game laws. When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by those laws were suddenly removed in France, the whole people at once commenced a destructive campaign against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly-won liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the course of the day." ... "The declaration of the Assembly that every man is free to hunt on his own land ... has filled all France with an intolerable cloud of sportsmen. ... The declaration speaks of compensations and indemnities [to the seigneurs], but the ungovernable populace takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs at the obligation imposed by the decree." The contagious influence of the French Revolution occasioned the removal of similar restrictions, with similar results, in other countries. The habits then formed have become hereditary on the Continent, and though game laws still exist in England, there is little doubt that the blind prejudices of the ignorant and half-educated classes in that country against birds are, in some degree, at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase of game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to indemnify himself by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys his partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his tenants, and so long as the members of "Sparrow Clubs" are forbidden to follow higher game, they will suicidally revenge themselves by destroying the birds which protect their wheatfields.