142 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



Now, the next purpose in the bill is to allow the secre- 

 tary of agriculture to control the importation of foreign 

 wild birds and foreign wild animals. If this law had 

 been in force at the time the mistake was made in the in- 

 troduction of the English sparrow we should have been 

 spared from the pestilential existence of that ' ' rat of the 

 air," that vermin of the atmosphere. But some gentle- 

 men who thought they knew better than anybody else 

 what the country needed saw fit to import these little 

 pests, and they have done mucn toward driving the na- 

 tive wild bird life out of the states. This bill provides 

 that the secretary may prevent the importation of the 

 fruit bat, or the flying fox, the English sparrow, the star- 

 ling, and other birds of that kind, which, in his discre- 

 tion, he may regard as detrimental. 



The necessity for a provision of this kind is obvious. 

 The mongoose, a miserable, murderous animal that was 

 introduced for the purpose of killing snakes in Jamaica 

 — by the way, one member of the House asked me the 

 other day what kind of a bird the mongoose was — the 

 mongoose has proved a nuisance and a pest worse than 

 the serpent that it kills. It drove the rats in Jamaica 

 to the trees, and the rat now there has become an arboreal 

 animal. The rat still exists and keeps out of the way of 

 the mongoose. But the birds of the island have been al- 

 most destroyed by this imported pest. Now, a proper 

 control on the part of the secretary of agriculture would 

 prevent the importation of injurious foreign animals. 

 Some gentlemen in California have suggested the pro- 

 priety of introducing the fruit bat or flying fox there, 

 and this bill would prevent their importation. They 

 would prove as great a nuisance as the English rabbits in 

 Australia and the Scotch thistle in Canada. Some pa- 

 triotic son of Scotland wanted to see if the thistle would 



