songbirds! The tower is the
hiding place of the fowler, and the calling birds are decoy birds whose
eyes have been totally blinded by red-hot wires in order that they will
call more frantically than birds with eyes would do. The whistling wings
that seemed a hawk were a sham, made by a racquet thrown through the air
by the fowler, through a slot in his tower. He keeps by him many such
racquets.

The door of the tower opens, and out comes the fowler. He is lowbrowed,
swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand seizes the
struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that
entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head
of the helpless victim _at the eyes_, and after one wild, fluttering
agony--it is dead.

The fowler sighs contentedly, re-enters his dirty and foul-smelling
tower, tosses the feathered atom upon the pile of dead birds that lies
upon the dirty floor in a dirty corner,--and is ready for the next one.

Ask him, as did Mr. Astley, and he will tell you frankly that there are
about 150 dead birds in the pile,--starlings, sparrows, linnets,
greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, hawfinches, redstarts,
blackcaps, robins, song thrushes, blackbirds, blue and coal tits,
fieldfares and redwings. He will tell you also, that there are _seven
other roccolos within sight and twelve within easy walking distance_. He
will tell you, as he did Mr. Astley, that during that week he had taken
about 500 birds, and that that number was a fair average for each of the
12 other roccolos.

This means the destruction of about 5,000 songbirds per week _in that
neighborhood alone!_ Another keeper of a roccolo told Mr. Astley that
during the previous autumn he took about 10,000 birds at his small and
comparatively insignificant roccolo.

And above that awful roccolo of slaughtered innocents rose _a wooden
cross_, in memory of Christ, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

Around the interior of the entwined sapling tops that formed the fatal
bower of death there hung a semicircle of tiny cages containing live
decoys,--chaffinches, hawfinches, titmice and several other species.
"The older and staider ones call repeatedly," says Mr. Astley, "and the
chaffinches break into song. It is the only song to be heard in Italy at
the time of the autum migration."

And the King of Italy, the Queen of Italy, the Parliament of Italy and
His Holiness the Pope permit these things, year in and year