I 82 TKANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



But, sir, I wish, in my prosy way, to ask your attention, not so much 

 to the peerless beauty of these inhabitants of the upper deep, as to their 

 usefulness to us, to man, who puts forth the modest (?) claim of being 

 the lord of this lower creation. Perhaps it will not add to our self-con- 

 ceit to be told that investigation has about demonstrated that, although 

 birds can exist without man, yet man cannot live without birds. The 

 insect world would conquer us ; our fields, orchards and forests would be 

 speedily devastated, were it not for our feathered friends. Birds in their 

 multiform varieties are the only creatures which can wage a successful 

 warfare with the world of insects. Nature has imposed upon them a 

 most ravenous appetite, and directed, bent — may I %2.y sent? — that appetite 

 towards those innumerable swarms of delving, creeping and flying ene- 

 mies, which, but for birds, would inevitably bring desolation, famine and 

 death to the family of man. 



I am conscious, Mr. President, that these little friends of ours are 

 not all equally desirable, or equally useful, and that some discrimination 

 should be used. If the sentence of death has to be pronounced upon 

 any of them, I plead like Brutus, " Let us carve them like a dish fit for 

 the gods, not hack them like carcasses to be thrown to the hounds." 



Even the crows, the Corvus family, are not, to use a vile theological 

 phrase, " totally depraved." We must admit they are saucy, and that the 

 blue-jay is the very personification of impudence. We have only a few 

 representatives of this order ; the carrion-crow, raven, magpie and jay 

 are about all; and of them I say as Cowper did of England, "With all 

 your faults I love you still." 



But I am not going to discriminate. The highest Authority that 

 ever graced our earth has assured us that not a sparrow falls to the ground 

 without the notice of the Power which created him. 



My opinion has been asked concerning the English sparrows: Wisely 

 or unwisely they are here, and we. must make the best of them; for they 

 have come to stay. They seem to have some portion of that vile ingre- 

 dient of Saxon blood which makes us all aggressive ; they trouble our 

 small native birds much in the same way and degree that our ancestors 

 from that seagirt isle, and we, their children, also, have done and are still 

 doing, to the aborigines of this country, which we proudly call our own. 



I have found these sparrows in several of our cities ; two of them 

 one day paid a visit to my farm. They may, for aught I know, have been 

 on a bridal tour; at any rate they did not tarry; but, like too many men, 

 returned to the city, forsaking those sylvan haunts "where dwells plain 

 innocence unsullied beauty, patient of labor with a little pleased calm 

 contemplation and poetic ease." Alas! that birds should be no wiser 

 than men. But I must bring this rambling essay to an end. 



Meaning no offense to you, gentlemen, permit me to say that I will 

 trust to the judgment of a woman in some things where I fear to trust a 

 man. I asked a lady in the city of Philadelphia what she thought of the 

 English sparrov/, flocks of which were in the street before us. 



"Why, sir," she replied, " two years ago we could not walk these 

 streets here in sunny days without umbrellas to protect us, not from the 



