35 



common brown drop or measuring worm. . . . The English 

 sparrow rid us of this nuisance; it ate every one of them." * 



Dr. John B. Smith, entomologist of the New Jersey Experi- 

 ment Station, wrote as follows regarding this habit of the house 

 sparrow : 



On the evening of July 17 (1908), Newark, Elizabeth, Paterson, Jersey 

 City and some of the surrounding towns were treated to a unique experi- 

 ence a veritable swarm of snow-white moths flying around the electric 

 lights and giving the appearance of a snowstorm in midsummer. ... On 

 the morning after the flight the sparrows apparently became very busy 

 soon after daylight, and all that was left to mark it was numerous quan- 

 tities of wings without bodies. . . . This flight was composed of indi- 

 viduals of the snow-white Eugonia, known everywhere half a century ago 

 as the parent of the ' ' span worm " . It was at that time the most abundant 

 and destructive shade-tree insect in the eastern United States, and its 

 caterpillars, feeding upon most of the shade trees, were a nuisance by their 

 habit of suspending themselves by threads from the foliage upon which 

 they fed, and dropping upon pedestrians moving beneath. 2 



The sparrows were introduced into this country to protect 

 street trees and park trees from these caterpillars. They did 

 their work well. It was not long before the caterpillars practi- 

 cally disappeared from the cities. Unfortunately, however, the 

 sparrows, by driving out the native birds, brought about an 

 increase of tussock moths, which for several years ravaged 

 many street and park trees. 



The pupae of the codling moth are eaten by many birds. 

 These moths spin cocoons beneath scales of bark on the trunks 

 and large limbs of apple trees, where they are attacked, par- 

 ticularly during winter, by woodpeckers and titmouses. Mr. 

 A. P. Martin of Petaluma, California, believed that there the 

 destruction of this apple-tree pest was attributable to the red- 

 shafted flicker. He said that in examining the crevices of the 

 bark for codling moths in the spring he failed to find any, where 

 there had been thousands in the fall. Upon investigation he 

 found numbers of cocoons, but in every case the occupant of the 

 cocoon was absent. In the scales of bark over each cocoon he 

 found small holes where the pupse had been drawn out. He 

 noticed large numbers of flickers in the orchards during the 

 early spring months industriously examining the trunks and 



Canadian Entomologist, Vol. XV, 1883, p. 235. 



Report, New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, 1908, pp. 317, 318. 



