312 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fifty years than there has been in the past, what will become of our 

 beautiful American birds? We know now that the introduction 

 of the sparrow was a great mistake, and one of the most unfortunate 

 things connected with the sparrow incident is that during the years 

 it took for us to find out its bad qualities for ourselves no attention 

 or protection was given to our own native birds. They had not only 

 to contend with their natural enemies, the hawks, owls, snakes, 

 cats, etc., which imperil their lives during the nesting season — and, 

 in fact, at all times — but were obliged twice a year to undergo the 

 dangers and fatigues of migration and run the gauntlet of gunners 

 and trappers, who killed them in large numbers for food and, more 

 often, to supply the demand of the millinery trade for feathers 

 and birds (some one has said, there are only three animals that 

 wear feathers — birds, savages and women!). 



In 1897, it was estimated, from reports from thirty different 

 states, that our song birds had decreased forty-six per cent in 

 fifteen years. In addition to the causes mentioned, the fad for 

 collecting bird skins and eggs, wanton gunning, brush fires, the 

 custom of improving estates by the removal of trees and vines 

 — "stripping them to the quick," as it has been called — and the 

 English sparrow, have been to blame. Almost every writer on birds 

 at the present time tells of the sparrow's iniquity in disturbing the 

 birds, destroying their nests or driving them away by the process 

 which Olive Thorne Miller calls "mobbing". 



The president of the American Society of Bird Restorers says 

 "Wherever the English sparrow greatly abounds he soon gets the 

 upper hand of our native birds and either fully or nearly expels 

 them or most of them. A few English sparrows do comparatively 

 little harm ; the sparrow is dangerous exactly in proportion to his 

 number in any community. Increase the English sparrow in any bird- 

 habited community, and a decrease in number, both of individuals and 

 species, is as sure to follow as the night follows the day. Increase 

 the sparrows to a great extent, let them sivarm, and you virtually 

 exterminate or expel all native birds. This is not because the spar- 

 row consumes the food that the native birds want, but it is chiefly 

 because the sparrow is noisy, prying, filthy, mischievous, a nest and 

 tgg destroyer and a direct mobber and killer of native birds." 



The sparrows are especially hard on the bluebirds, martins and 

 wrens, which from time immemorial have had the habit of nesting 

 near our houses. Before these birds return in the spring, the spar- 

 rows take possession of their boxes, when no effort on the part of 

 the owners can dislodge them — nothing short of a gun seems effectu- 

 al. A good plan, now often used, is to stop up the entrances to the 



