STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 71 



sparrow, Passes Domesticas. Scieutific research into the character 

 and disposition of this untamed annihilator of horticulture and agri- 

 culture has developed some very startling facts that call for your im- 

 mediate attention If the following synopsis of the report, which 

 was prepared by C. Hart Merriam, of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture, be true, the friends should become alarmed at the sad 

 havoc this foreign importation is causing among our friends, the na- 

 tive birds of America. The report says: 



'* The English sparrow is a hardy, prolific and aggressive bird, po- 

 sessed of much intelligence and more than ordinary cunning. It was 

 first brought into this country in the fall of 1850. It is domestic and 

 gregarious in habitj and takes advantage of the protection afforded by 

 proximity to man, thus escaping nearly all the enemies which check 

 the abundance of our native birds. Its fecundity is amazing. In the 

 latitude of New York and southward it hatches, as a rule, five or six 

 broods in a season, with from four to six in a brood. Assuming the 

 average annual product of a single pair to be twenty-four young, of 

 which half are females and half males, and assuming further that all 

 live, together with their off-spring, it will be seen that in ten years 

 the progeny of a single pair would be 275.716,983,698 In the year 

 1886 the English sparrow was found to have established itself in 

 thirty-five states and five territories. In the United States the total 

 area occupied at the close of the year 1886 is 885,000 square miles; in 

 Canada it \i not quite 148,000 square miles; in all 1,033,000 square 

 miles. In the United States alone it has spread during the oast fifteen 

 years at the average rate of 59,000 square miles per year, and in the 

 United States and Canada together at the rate of 69,000 square miles 

 per year. Of all the native birds which habitually make their homes 

 near the abodes of man, the martin is the only species which is liable 

 to hold its own against the sparrows, and numerous instances are on 

 record where even the martin has been beaten and forced to abandon 

 its former nesting place by these beligerent aliens The birds which 

 have suffered most from the English sparrow are the robin, catbird, 

 wren, song-sparrow, chipping-sparrow, yellow-bird, oriole, vireo, and 

 phoebe. Not only does the sparrow drive away and sometimes kill 

 the adult birds, but when it finds their nests it throws out their eggs 

 and young, and not infrequently feasts upon them." 



WHAT THE SPARROWS DESTROY. 



The sparrows cause a positive and direct loss to our agricultural 



