410 THE BIOLOGY OF BIRDS 



between exploitation for utility and elimination for " fun," 

 or greed, or a mania for possessing. A caged songster is 

 a sad sight and a basketful of dead larks is sadder still ; 

 but neither is so deplorable as killing birds for fun. But 

 it is not always easy for even the humanitarian ornithologist 

 to keep his hands quite clean. 



As an offset to deliberate destruction, which our ancestors 

 practised for utility and our contemporaries for sport, 

 there is deliberate protection. This is to a slight extent 

 rooted in superstition (of a type not to be much deplored), 

 as may be seen in the respect paid to robin and wren, spider 

 and lady-bird. It is also in some measure due to sincere 

 popular favour (long may it flourish and widely may it 

 spread !) as we see in the goodwill that shelters cuckoo and 

 nightingale, and many another bird. But protection is 

 chiefly to the credit of " the law," and, as Dr. Ritchie points 

 out in the book we are following, this has had an interesting 

 evolution. It was at first almost wholly an aristocratic 

 method of protecting wild animals for sport purposes ; 

 the basis broadened, however, and all sorts of useful animals 

 and birds were included ; of recent years there have been 

 welcome hints of a new sense of values, for the asgis of the 

 law is being extended to the beautiful. 



Besides domestication, destruction, and protection there 

 has been another deliberate action on man's part, namely, 

 the introduction of new animals from other countries. 

 In many cases this has been followed by results as far- 

 reaching as they were unexpected, and the well-known 

 consequences of introducing rabbits into Australia are 

 paralleled by those which followed the repeated importation 

 of European sparrows to the United States. About 1,500 

 sparrows were introduced in North America between 

 1850 and 1870, partly in the hope that they would check 

 the ravages of the elm-tree caterpillar, for sparrows feed 

 their young ones on caterpillars. 



" To these introduced birds," Professor H. C. Bumpus 

 wrote in 1898 (" Wood's HoU Biological Lectures," 1896- 

 1S97, pp. 1-15), " the environment has been novel. They 



