BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



65 



INTRODUCTION OF THE HOUSE SPARROW. 



Ill 185S Mr. Joseph Peace Hazard imported a number of House Sparrows 

 from Liverpool, England, for the purpose of liberating them at Peace Dale, 

 Rhode Island, They were landed at Boston where, it is said, some of them 

 accidentally escaped.^ Of these fugitives nothing was afterwards heard, and it 

 is probable that all of them perished. The House Sparrow was again intro- 

 duced into Boston — this time deliberately but once more without apparent suc- 

 cess—in 1868, when two hundred birds were purchased in Germany by the 

 city government. "Unfortunately all died on their passage except about a score. 

 These were set at liberty in June, but, weakened by their sea-voyage, several 

 of them were found dead in the deer-park, and the rest disappeared. The fol- 

 lowing summer more were imported, but all died except ten. These were wel- 

 cared for, and only released when in excellent condition. For some months 

 nothing was seen of these birds, and the experiment was supposed to be a fail- 

 ure, when it was ascertained that they had betaken themselves to the vicinity 

 of stables in the southern part of the city, had increased and multiplied in large 

 numbers, reappearing in the winter to the number of one hundred and fifty. 

 They were regularly fed by the city forester each day in the deer-park, and 

 roosted at night in the thatch of the roofs of the buildings. Since then they 

 have very largely increased. About twenty, that same summer, were set at lib- 

 erty in Monument Square, Charlestown." 2 



I remember spending the greater part of a cold morning in December, 

 1869, looking for the alien birds in Boston. On this occasion I failed to find 

 any of them on the Common, but near the pond in the Public Garden I finally 

 came upon six or eight huddled together in the top of a leafless bush. During 

 the next three years they became numerous in Boston, and in 1873 ^ they began 

 to invade Cambridge, appearing first at Harvard Square and in Cambridgeport, 

 A few were seen in the immediate neighborhood of our own place the following 

 year, and in 1875 a pair nested, for the first time, in our garden. By 1878 they 

 had established themselves very generally throughout Cambridge, as well as in 



' Merriam and Barrows The English Sparrow (Passer domesticus) in North America U S 

 Department of Agriculture. Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, bulletin I, 1880' 



' Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, History of North American Birds, I, 1874, 526-5-7 

 ^ It is possible that a few birds entered Cambridge before this date, but if so I have been unable 

 to obtain any evidence of the fact. 



