?6o Notes and News. [October 



zona, the ornithology of the region receiving special attention. During 

 the past summer he has heen ahle to make several extended and very suc- 

 cessful expeditions into the more unexplored parts of the Territory, includ- 

 ing the Matatzal and Mongollon Mountains. Large shipments of speci- 

 mens received from him at the American Museum of Natural History 

 attest his industry and success. He intends later to make them the basis 

 of elaborate papers, giving the results of his several years' natural history 

 work in the Territory. 



The Report of the Ornithologist to the Department of Agriculture, Dr. 

 C. Hart Merriam, for the year 1S86, which has recently come to hand, not 

 only reviews the work of the year, but contains what may be considered as 

 a preliminary report of extended investigations upon the House Sparrow 

 (Passer domesticus). The results stated are of startling importance and 

 suggestiveness. The report gives a brief history of its introduction, 

 rate of increase, method of diffusion, and its destructive proclivities. An 

 accompanying map shows its distribution in the United States at the close 

 of the year 1SS6, when the area occupied by it is given as 885,000 square 

 miles in the United States and about i4S.(xx> square miles in Canada, or a 

 total of 1, 033, ocx) square miles over which it has spread in North America, 

 mainly during the present decade It now has overspread not only all 

 the region east of the Mississippi River, except a narrow border along the 

 Gulf Coast, but nearly all of Missouri, a large part of Kansas, Iowa, and 

 considerable areas in Nebraska, Minnesota, Utah, and California. It proves 

 to be not only an enemy of several of our most valued song birds, but ex- 

 ceedingly injurious to the gardener and fruit grower, especially grape-cul- 

 turists, and also extends its lavages to grain fields. It proves to be not 

 only a complete failure as a destroyer of insects, but is charged with actu- 

 ally causing an increase of one of our most noxious caterpillar pests. 

 Many abstracts of testimony on these points, from many and widely dis- 

 tant sources, are given in the Report, which submits a series of recom- 

 mendations to legislators, and to the people in reference to the Spar- 

 row- question. To quote from the Report: "The English Sparrow is a 

 curse of such virulence that it ought to be systematically attacked and 

 destroyed before it becomes necessary to deplete the public treasury for the 

 purpose, as has been done in other countries. By concerted action, and 

 by taking advantage of its gregarious habits, much good may be accom- 

 plished with little or no expenditure of money." Methods are then sug- 

 gested for its destruction. 



The ravages of the Rice-bird (Dolic/totiyx oryzivorus) in the rice fields 

 of the South are then detailed, these involving, it is estimated, a loss of 

 millions of dollars annually to the rice-growers. 



