320 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



rado potato beetles, and this is the only bird I have ever known to 

 destroy that insect. 



The Jay bird, (C. crcstatus,) is one of our prettiest and most fami- 

 liar birds, and as a songster is capable of producing- a series of low 

 melodious tones ; but he is an omniverous marauder, an unmittigated 

 scamp. He is the school-boy of bird life, whose only excuse for living 

 is that he may comuut some outrageous depredation and then fly off 

 and yell his joy in demoniacal tones. He does sometime forget himself 

 and warble a low, sweet melody; but it is only during his mental 

 aberations. I think as soon as he collects his wits he is thoroughly 

 ashamed of himself for having wasted a moment which might have 

 been devoted to the commission of some nuisance. 



He is a connoiseur in diet, and takes to variety ; and will pull the 

 shuck down from a green ear of sweet corn and peck the grains off 

 with apparently as much relish as he will rob the May cherry, apricot, 

 early appie or grave vine. Yet these are only the dainties for which 

 he renders compensation by the astonishing quantity of insects he 

 feeds to his progeny. 



THE ENGLISH SPARROW, fP. domcstkus.). 



England's contribution to American Ornithology — was inported to 

 destroy the canker-worms and geome birds; but with true English 

 perversity, positively refuse to have anything to do with either from 

 the day of his landing to the present. jSTature built him on the princi- 

 ples upon which grain-eating birds are fashioned ; but he declines 

 grain for fruits or the garbage of the gutter. Pugnacious in the high- 

 est degree, he drives asvay the native birds that would feed upon the 

 insects he was imported to destroy. Of all the bird fauna of A^meilca, 

 this alien promises to prove the greatest if not the only nuisance. He 

 is already a nuisance in the city, and, judging from the observations of 

 American, and the experience of Australian ornithologists, he promises 

 to as completely overrun the country as the city ; and that within a 

 few years. As rapidly as he encroaches upon the rural districts, he 

 should be murdered — utterly regardless of the suffering entailed upon 

 his numerous progeny. The New York Sun " detests the English spar- 

 row as a bird that is wholly depraved, a robber, a brigand, a pirate, 

 everything that is bad;" and if it would echo my entire sentiment it 

 n)ight add, " nothing that is good." Listen to his acconjplishments as 

 an Australian importation, and then we will drop him — as often as he 

 comes in gun shot. 



