BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 105 



natural history that we have learned, trying to exchange the 

 wild creatures of different continents. Australia is in despair 

 over the rabbit, and the Colonies and America alike hold 

 the sparrow in abomination. 



" The Sparrozv, meanest of the feathered race. 

 His fit companion finds in every placed 



COWPER. 



When I was travelling in the United States in 1883, 

 I drew the sparrow-line from personal observation at Omaha 

 on the east and Salt Lake City on the west. From 

 the one side it had not then crossed the Mississippi. But it 

 was steadily advancing, the aggressive little fowl, from both 

 seaboards, and while it had pushed forward from the Atlantic 

 into Illinois, so from the Pacific it had then travelled as far as 

 Nevada. The tyranny of the sparrow is part of the price men 

 pay for civilisation. Only savages are exempt. In America 

 it has developed into a multitudinous evil, to which our own 

 grievance against the bird is nothing ; has dispossessed the 

 children of the soil, and thrust its Saxon assumption of 

 superiority upon the feathered natives of the country. 



Sparrows do not respect Congress, and take no notice of 

 legislative enactments for their extirpation. Imported as an 

 insect-eating treasure, they have turned out grain-devouring 



o 



