How to Attract the Birds 



various places from Sandy Hook to Iowa — the San 

 Francisco and other western colonies were not 

 started until 1875 — but corporations took up the 

 task of introducing them into cities where the 

 measuring worms hung from every tree and dropped 

 on every passer-by, only to be crushed under foot 

 until the sidewalks were disgusting. Philadelphia 

 alone imported a thousand sparrows. People benev- 

 olently disposed sent them to friends in distant 

 states; they protected, fed, housed and coddled 

 them. Meanwhile the birds, which needed nobody's 

 care, being fit to survive if ever creature was, multi- 

 plied enormously, and soon escaped from the cities 

 to towns, and from towns to villages, but always 

 keeping near man, for a parasitical existence ever 

 suits them best. The hardships and dangers of the 

 wild, independent state are carefully avoided by these 

 little tramps. By 1870 they had gained a foothold in 

 twenty states, the District of Columbia, and two 

 Canadian provinces. Now only Alaska, Arizona, 

 Montana, Nevada and New Mexico remain to be in- 

 vaded. In an old number of the "Transactions of 

 the New York Academy of Sciences" there is an ac- 

 count by a local ornithologist of his visit to Madison 

 Square to see if he could find some English Spar- 

 rows which, he had heard, might be seen there. 

 Though written less than forty years ago, it reads 

 like a page of ancient history. 



As the "yellow peril" is to human immigration, 

 so is this sparrow to other birds. It is true he ban- 

 ished the measuring caterpillar from our cities and 

 helps destroy the seeds of crab-grass, dandelions, and 

 other noxious weeds on our lawns; but so numerous 



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