428 THE HOUSE SPARROW. 



seriously interfered with by it, and the writer has frequently seen 

 the martin dispossessed, after a desperate resistance, of the premises 

 proA'ided for it by farmers, and uUimately driven away entirely by 

 the s})arrow, from its home and neii^hboi'hood. 



Keferrinpf to the advent of the English sparrow, the Kansas City 

 Journal ({uoted some time ago from the Topeka Journal as having 

 " an account of the first English sparrows brought to Kansas. In 

 18G4, F. W. Giles conceived the idea of importing some of these birds. 

 He shipped in all 28 of them. They were confined in cages at his 

 place in Topeka until all but 5 had died. At last the 5 were turned 

 loose to take their chances of life or death, though (iiles had no hope 

 that they would live. They fooled him. They took up their home 

 in the neighborhood. The following autumn there were 12 bii'ds. 

 The second season found GO, and the third sunnner about 3,000. Then 

 they increased so fast that no account could be kept, and in the 

 twenty-five years which followed they spread all over the West." 



