Some Naturalized Foreigners 



are the charges brought against him in the Govern- 

 ment's exhaustive report — charges that the bird 

 lover fain would pardon, if in justice he might — that 

 one by one his staunchest old friends are deserting 

 him. In several wheat-growing states where his 

 depredations on the ripened grain cost the farmers 

 many thousands of dollars a year, a price is put upon 

 his head. Reversing the order of Pope's epigram 

 on vice, we first embraced, then pitied and now must 

 endure the English sparrow. Yet had a sparrow ex- 

 clusion act been suggested when the sparrow craze 

 was at its height, it is doubtful if a single senator 

 who lent his voice to secure the Chinese exclusion 

 act would have given it his support. But our 

 legislators have learned a lesson: the Lacey Act 

 permits no one to bring a foreign bird into this 

 country without permission from the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



Not to be confounded with the English house- 

 sparrow is the useful and tuneful European tree - 

 sparrow, which has been successfully acclimated 

 after repeated failures, around St. Louis, Missouri. 



AN INFLUX OF SONGSTERS 



A few years before the first English sparrow 

 came across the ocean, Thomas Woodcock, presi- 

 dent of the Natural History Society of Brooklyn, im- 

 ported, for their charm's sake, European goldfinches, 

 linnets, bullfinches, and the skylarks, whose mottled 

 brown coloring suggests more of earth than of 

 heaven. It is known that the last-named species, at 

 least, survived two winters, albeit that over-populated 



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