DANGER OF AN EARLY EXTINCTION OF SONG BIRDS. 179 



disfigure and ruin so many apple and wild cherry 

 trees. 



Our native sparrows live almost wholly on insects 

 and the seeds of troublesome weeds. 



Space will not allow the continuance of this enumer- 

 ation, but this kind of services expresses only in small 

 part the valuable uses for which we should hold the 

 birds in great favor. They minister in a large degree 

 to our intellectual enjoyments ; to our love of nature 

 in its most attractive forms ; to our* taste for beauty 

 and music — not in equal measure, it is true, to the igno- 

 rant, the uncultured, the unimaginative — but to people 

 of refinement, endowed with sensibility and imagina- 

 tion, the birds are large elements in the sum of inno- 

 cent pleasure. 



Men are generally slow to realize the danger of los- 

 ing that which is apparently abundant, especially if it 

 costs nothing. One sees this in the wanton destruction 

 of useful forests and in the lavish waste of quantities 

 of valuable timber, but in nothing else is this shown so 

 clearly as in the senseless and Avicked waste of bird life. 

 It seems difficult to make people understand the pres- 

 ent causes which, unless speedily checked, will surely 

 lead to the extermination of several species of our 

 native birds, and among them several that are the most 

 useful and interesting. 



Let us examine a few of these causes, some of which 

 have long existed, and others that are of recent origin. 

 Among the latter are the English sparrows, which are 

 driving our native birds out of villages and cities more 



