CONCLUDING KExMARKS. 107 



bird, wren, song and chipping sparrows, which are quite 

 versatile in their habits, would, of all others, be the 

 most likely to succeed. 



If cities, like Philadelphia for example, that had 

 entailed so much expense in providing comfortable 

 homes for the squirrels, which certainly were of little 

 use save to amuse children, and adults who had nothing 

 else to do than to lounge about our squares, had taken 

 as much interest in many of our smaller insectivorous 

 birds, and encouraged their presence by every means 

 that wisdom and judgment could devise, we should 

 to-day not be pestered by these disgusting exotics, 

 which seem destined to overspread the entire country, 

 and drive our own native favorites away. 



Westward the sparrows are slowly but surely directing 

 their resistless course, like a baleful pestilence, sweeping 

 everything before them, and leaving only ruin in their 

 wake. All this has been brought about in less than 

 twelve years. What another decade will accomplish, 

 if these saucy knaves are permitted to go on as they 

 have done, I do not venture to say. Their present 

 depredations and odious practices give us a foretaste of 

 what their future course of action will be. We shall 

 be entirely deserted by our native-born feathered friends, 

 and what of grains and fruits the sparrows do not take, 

 will certainly be destroyed by the thousands of noxious 

 insects, in their various developmental stages, which 

 will then wantonly run riot. This will be the inevi- 

 table state of affairs. The trees will be stripped of their 

 foliage even before they have flaunted their unfurled 

 banners to the vernal breezes, and what will be the 

 result? Despoiled of their respiratory organs, their 



