DANCERS 61 



This bird celebrity is perhaps the most abused 

 and misunderstood friend of the human race. He 

 is strictly a city bird ; and mankind seems especially 

 informed about his disagreeable habits, with little 

 knowledge of how much good he does for the hu- 

 man race. His sins and shortcomings have been 

 greatly overestimated. Let us learn something 

 about this abused friend of ours. He is surely 

 among the most intelligent of birds, living always on 

 intimate terms with man. It is this intelligence 

 that causes him never to trust the lord of creation. 

 A young sparrow is stupid, but an old one is a sage. 

 He is famed for his cleverness, cunning, patience, 

 persistence, caution, and the ability to act and 

 dance. As a protection to city parks, trees, shrub- 

 bery, and flowers he has no equal. In fact, if it 

 were not for the sparrows in these days of pests, 

 we could have few city flowers or even trees. 



"The abuse of the English sparrow," wrote 

 Ai'chibald C. Weeks, in the New York Tribune, 

 "is due to ignorance and unwarranted prejudice. 

 No person is competent to judge of birds unless 

 possessed of a thorough knowledge of the activities 

 and life histories of insects and competent to dif- 

 ferentiate between the beneficial and injurious. 

 There is no bird which can measure up to the spar- 



