432 Original Articles. [July, 
quiries to objects of immediate or material usefulness. They do not 
ask simply, whether certain animals are good eating, or otherwise 
adapted for daily use, but they consider that the eye and the ear should 
be gratified also, and that everything is worth securing which adds 
cheerfulness to scenery, and revives home associations on colonial 
ground. The introduction of insect-destroying birds is, it is true, an 
object arrived at; but with this has been combined an effort to sur- 
round colonial residences with such reminders of the old country, as 
thrushes, blackbirds, skylarks, starlings, chaffinches, and sparrows.* 
The goldfinch, greenfinch, linnet, yellow-hammer, ortolan, bunting, 
robin, and canary, and many kinds of the smaller birds of other coun- 
tries, as the Chinese sparrow, Java sparrow, and the Indian mino, are 
being accumulated in the aviaries of the Society, and many of them 
have already bred there. The nightingale and the hedge-sparrow have 
been promised them by ladies at home, and the Queen herself has 
made an effort to supply them with the rook. Such news may be sur- 
prising to the farmers of this country, who mercilessly destroy the very 
birds which our wiser antipodean brethren are seeking to introduce : 
but such is the fact, and we believe the Australians are right. 
In concluding this brief survey of a subject of so great and 
increasing interest, we ought to do full justice to the aims of the 
Australian Society, who regard the advantages of acclimatization in a 
light which raises it above a mere utilitarian and commercial specula- 
tion. Deprecating the sneers and misrepresentations of thoughtless 
and ignorant persons, who have no conception of the varied objects 
and considerable interests which it embraces, they openly state their 
object in stocking their country with new, useful, and beautiful things 
to be, not only to add to the national wealth—not only to suggest new 
forms for colonial industry, but, also to provide for manly sports, which 
will lead the Australian youth to seek their recreation on the river’s 
bank and mountain side, rather than in the café and casino. Nor do 
they stop at this praiseworthy avowal; we have alluded to a touch of 
romance in their undertaking, and it is not everyone who, endowed 
with a commercial mind and deeply engaged in the practical business 
of life, will fully enter into the desire the colonists express, not only to 
add new elements to the food of an entire people, but also to surround 
every homestead, and the path of every wayfarer, with new forms of 
interest and beauty. This is their unwonted aim, and we cannot but 
rejoice that such a truly poetical feeling should mingle with the 
sterner and more practical realities of the system. Such a body may 
well claim the sympathies of every good man, on the ground that they 
are engaged in a noble work, and we most cordially wish them God 
speed in their useful and humanizing undertaking. 
* In 1830 a merchant wishing to import sparrows to the Hayanna, found on 
arrival that the customs duties were so heavy that he could not hope to sell the 
birds profitably ; he therefore let them fly—the birds entered the island free of 
duty, and at the end of some years their number was so much increased, that in 
certain localities they are as numerous as they are at home. (Graells, delegate of 
the Acclimatization Society at Madrid.) This fact is an encouragement to the 
Australian movement. 
