PREFACE. 



In offering this little volume to the public, the author feels 

 confident that it will meet with a cordial reception from those 

 who have neither the leisure nor the patience to make such 

 investigations as a work like the present requires. In view 

 of the many heated discussions which the sparrow has produced 

 in this country, tending to show its general usefulness, or whole- 

 sale destructiveness, a careful and critical survey of its life-his- 

 tory, detailing the minutest particulars thereof, cannot fail to 

 awaken attention and to command respect. A desire to know 

 the subject in all its bearings, must certainly be of paramount 

 importance. Agriculturists and fruit-growers, mainly of all 

 others, will certainly reap the first fruits of such knowledge. 

 The facts, which the writer has gleaned from various fields of 

 observation, but largely from his own, at infinite pains and 

 expense, subserve, in the highest degree, the interests of humanity, 

 and should not be carelessly set aside or lightly considered. 



With the disappearance of our highly insectivorous native 

 species before the rapid and insolent advances of their hardy 

 foreign brother, and the consequent multiplication of insect 

 foes, must come the destruction of vegetation and the entail- 

 ment of untold misery upon man and beast. The sparrow itself, 

 by reason of its almost exclusive grain-eating habits, will 



