510 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Persons desiring to secure a lawn by seeding it, have to cover all seed 

 well, as this sparrow industriously searches the spot for uncovered seed. 

 Doubtless thousands of sparrows annuallj^ fill their gullets with the clover 

 and timothy seed sown on the fields in early spring by the farmers. 



As. soon as millet is ready to cut it has to be removed, as he has a 

 special affinity for the clusters of seed-filled heads of the millet stalk 

 while in the fields. 



Sorghum growing for seed has been abandoned near our larger cities, 

 as great flocks of hundreds daily visit the cane patches until all the seed 

 is eaten or shattered from the stalks. The sorghum fodder was rendered 

 worthless as a cattle feed by their presence. 



The suliject of weed-seed eating has been best answered by the De- 

 partment of Agriculture experts, showing that in nearly all cases "the seed 

 being mainly from the roadsides and waste places, so that its consumption 

 did neither good nor harm, except in so far as it served to divert the 

 attention of the sparrow and prevent it satisfying itself with other and 

 perhaps more valuable food." 



Wheat and rye are most greedily eaten. From the time growing wheat 

 is in the dough until it is threshed, his presence is almost constant in the 

 field. The standing straws are bent over and broken by his weight. 

 When in shock, the cap sheaves are often entirely stripped of grain, and 

 when the unthreshed wheat is put in ricks or stored in barns, all exposed 

 sheaves are "shelled out." 



Their taste for threshed oats has caused farmers to almost entirely 

 abandon the practice of broadcasting oats at seeding time, as a consider- 

 able quantity of the exposed grains are picked up and devoured by him. 

 He is also very destructive to oats in the sheaf and in the mow. 



For years our bobolink has been disastrous to the rice plantations of 

 the South, and now his associate in his depredations is this English spar- 

 row, which is hoped will not be so serious as the former, but grave fears 

 are being too surely realized. 



Fornioi-ly the lilue bird, wren, oriole, cat bird and mnny others of our 

 native birds nested in our door-yards and groves. Now it is difficult to 

 find many nests of any birds near our residences, and when they do nest, 

 they are not likely to return the following year. Out of 1.860 letters 

 received from individuals throughout oiu' country, a majority referred to 

 attacks to the blue bird, martin, wrens and swallows. One-third of all 

 the complaints referred to the more peaceable birds that nest principally 

 in trees. The remainder referred to more than eighty species that are 

 attacked or disturbed in nesting and feeding. 



It has been shown that the sparrow is decidedly injurious to fruits, 

 seeds and grains, drives away our native birds and is a serious nuisance 

 in other waj'S, but if he should be an insect-eating fellow, some excuse 

 might be offered for his depredations. 



