ON THE APPEARANCE AND BREEDING
OF PASTOR ROSEUS IN THE PROVINCE OF VERONA.
By Edoardo de Betta,
Member of the Royal Venetian Institute.[1]
[The following is the concluding portion of a memoir entitled "Le Cavallette e lo Storno roseo in Provincia di Verona nell' anno 1875," read at a nieetiug of the Royal Venetian Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, 29th of November, 1875, and printed in the 'Atti' of that body (vol. ii., ser. 5). The former part, relating to a wonderful and destructive visitation of Locusts—with which, in popular estimation, the appearance of the Rosecoloured Starlings was connected—we have been compelled for want of space to omit. The reader will do well to compare the following interesting account with that given by the Marchese O. Antinori, and translated by Mr. Sclater for 'The Zoologist' in 1857 (1st series, pp. 5668–5672).—Ed.]
The Rose-coloured Pastor, Pastor roseus, is a most formidable enemy of locusts. It has been asserted[2] that as its occurrence is deemed in many countries no fallacious indication of their appearance, so on any arrival of such a scourge, these birds are seen by the hundred or the thousand to follow the hordes which devastate the country.
Without wishing to believe that this was our case,—that is to say, that to the invasion of the locusts was solely due the arrival, as before stated, of the Rose-coloured Starling in the Veronese Province, and especially at Villafranca,[3]—I believe I shall not be far from the truth in thinking that the presence of the Acridium in the interior of the country, and in quantities so immeasurable, determined the stay here of the numberless troops in which these wandering birds reached us, having been originally perhaps more likely directed towards another part of Europe.
Whatever we may think, however, it was a sufficiently strange fact, at which all naturally marvelled, that at the very time of the invasion of the locusts there should appear so great a number of Rose-coloured Starlings as ive believe could not be reckoned at less than from twelve to fourteen thousand individuals,
