72 Transacticns. — Miscellaneous . 



In America there are many checks to the increase of the 

 sparrow which are lacking here, such as the severe winter and 

 natural enemies, so that it behoves us to take more strenuous 

 measures than our American cousins to combat the existing 

 great and steadily increasing nuisance. Yet I find the follow- 

 ing passage in the American report : " The English sparrow is 

 a curse of such virulence that it ought to be systematically 

 attacked and destroyed before it becomes necessary to deplete 

 the public treasury for the purpose." The pamphlet reviews 

 the various methods of combating the nuisance, such as 

 poisoning, trapping, shooting, paying a bounty for eggs and 

 heads, and even utilising the sparrow as an article of food. 

 Under the latter heading it mentions that the sparrow is 

 excellent eating, equalling the smaller game birds. " In 

 fact," it says, " at restaurants it is commonly sold under the 

 name of ' rice-bird,' even at times of the year w'hen there are 

 no rice-birds in the country." I do not know that we are ad- 

 vanced enough or possess a sufficient number of gourmets to 

 create a market for sparrows for the table, but in Calcutta- a 

 species of lark is caught in large numbers and is so utilised, 

 not merely fresh but also preserved in tins, and they are sold 

 under the name of ortolans, so perhaps some day our preserv- 

 ing-works may be employed in canning sparrows to masquerade 

 under the name of New Zealand ortolans. 



Poisoning does not appear to have been so successfully 

 carried on in America as here, while trapping appears to have 

 been conducted on a very limited scale, and the method of 

 destruction most favoured seems to be shooting. Speaking 

 of this mode of destruction, the writers say, " The sparrow 

 is a cunning, wary bird, and soon learns to avoid the means 

 devised by man for his destruction, hence much sagacity 

 must be displayed in the warfare against him. In the winter- 

 time, if food is placed in some convenient spot at the same 

 hour each day for a week, the sparrows will gather in dense 

 flocks to feed, and large numbers of them may be killed at one 

 time by firing upon them wuth small shot. By spreading the 

 food along a narrow strip of ground which can be raked 

 conveniently from some hiding-place the best results can be 

 obtained." This mode may be very suitable in a country 

 W'here the ground is covered for weeks with snow, but it 

 would not, I fear, prove very efficacious in New Zealand. 



The bounty system is considered at some considerable 

 length, and is condemned as being unsatisfactory and ex- 

 pensive, a view in which I concur. Time will not permit my 

 ■discussing this aspect of the question, but one ol)jection is 

 that the young of beneficial birds, such as the hedge-sparrow 

 {Accentor modidaris), or of the harmless ones, such as the 

 goldfinch {FrinytUa cardueUs), are to the ordinary individual 



