28 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1879 



" that those who do not want the bird on their premises will 

 " have a good luxury in sparrow pies." 



Is it possible that there are neither Apple or Cherry Orchards 

 in Washington.'' Other cities — of inferior population — per- 

 haps consequence — are not as destitute. Yet Professor Riley 

 does not speak of the Apple, and Cherry, or even the Straw- 

 berry, as exempt from insect-ravage ; for, indeed, how could he, 

 unless they are far luckier in the Federal District than their 

 congeners elsewhere. 



Dr. Elliott Coues, in the American Naturalist, classes spar- 

 rows among " the injurious agencies of Nature ; they seeming 

 " to devour insects only when they cannot get garbage, grain^ or 

 '^ young herbs to eat. Removed from the natural checks upon 

 " increase which surround a bird in its native land, and trans- 

 " planted into a new region where they were in the midst of 

 " uhnatural conditions, of course all their strong traits became 

 " stronger." 



Dr. Dixwell's dissection of the stomachs of thirty-nine spar- 

 rows, — male and female ; during the height of the canker-worm 

 pest in the Jamaica Plains district, in our own Commonwealth ; 

 by which no trace of insect or worms was disclosed ; furnishes 

 but a single instance from the many that betray the granivor- 

 ous nature of the species. Should not such a precise test, 

 indeed, influence Professor Riley to revise an over-hasty infer- 

 ence, and to concur in the conclusion of the majority of careful 

 observers that neither this stranger, nor our native birds, have 

 diminished to any appreciable extent, the plague of worms upon 

 fruit-trees in town or country. 



One English writer, who carries water upon both shoulders 

 with a marvellous equipoise, is very mellifluous. He would 

 seem almost qualified to bear a torch in the, next campaign for 

 the salvation of a Union that was thought to be cemented in 

 blood, but which must be saved over again, under stress of par- 

 tisan mendicancy, at least quadrennially. Just listen : " Pom- 

 "ologists are somewhat divided as to the benefits or injury 

 "derived from the s^/-billed birds. The robin ("soft-billed" 



