144 EEPOET UPON COTTON INSECTS. 



demands for the sparrows from the South. The first item which we shall 

 quote is from The Country, being a report of a discussion on the bird 

 by the Nuttall Ornithological Club, of Cambridge, Mass. 



SPARROWS BROUGHT TO JUDGMENT. 

 [Communicated officially by the Club.] 



At a meeting of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, of Cambridge, Mass., h^pon Jan- 

 uary 28, 1878, the evening was devoted to a discussion of the English or house spar- 

 row in America. In order to obtain a fair expression of opinion on the subject from 

 the ornithologists of the vicinity, notice of the proposed consideration of the subject 

 was sent to all the resident members of the Club, and several of the corresponding 

 members were invited to contribute. In view of the great practical and economic 

 interest of the subject to the general public, the secretary of the Club was requested 

 to prepare a report of the discussion for publication, which is herewith appended. 

 The result of the canvass, it may be premised, was a decision most decidedly unfavor- 

 able to the value and attractiveness of the sparrow in the United States. 



The president of the Club, Mr. William Bre\yster, remarked that when the sparrows 

 were first introduced he was disposed to view them in the light of a blessing. He rec- 

 ollected, when they were still an uncommon sight among us, that he noticed a small 

 colony nesting in a martin-house in Medford. The numerous apartments in the box 

 were occupied by martins and sparrows in about equal numbers, and the birds were 

 sitting peaceably together on the ledge or carrying in food to their young or sitting 

 mates. This, he stated, was the only observation he had ever made tending to show 

 these birds in a favorable light. 



Since their permanent establishment in this locality they had certainly driven away 

 many of our native species, though he did not say that this result is as yet so marked 

 in his neighborhood as elsewhere, where the sparrows had become more numerous. In 

 Washington, in 1873, he saw the English sparrow in the city parks and public squares 

 in limited numbers, but none in the Smithsonian grounds, where song sparrows, black 

 snowbirds, bluebirds, and a few other species abounded. During a visit to Washing- 

 ton the present winter not a single native bird was observed in those grounds. The 

 noisy foreigners had taken their places, and nearly every tree and clump of bushes re- 

 sounded with their querulous, disagreeable chattering. Mr. Chas. M. Carpenter, of 

 Providence, R. I., had informed him that in that city the sparrows were fast banishing 

 the home varieties, especially waging war on such as select boxes for their nesting- 

 sites, and that the new-comer was regarded there as an unmitigated nuisance. As for 

 claims for the bird on the ground of having exterminated or even materially diminished 

 the numbers of the insects that prey upon the shade trees in Boston or vicinity, the 

 speaker thought we should be extremely careful how we credit them with what may 

 have been the result of other and less conspicuous agencies. Insects, as well as many 

 other organic creatures, are well known to pass through periodical cycles of excessive 

 abundance and comparative scarcity. Granting that in Boston the Orgyia pest was 

 much abated through several successive years after the sparrows were introduced in that 

 city, we had no right to give tho sparrows credit for that occurrence. Circumstances 

 may have favored the sparrows. Had not this insect just passed through a cycle of 

 comparative scarcity ? If the sparrows acted to any great extent as destroying agents, 

 having once fairly obtained the upper hand, why did they not keep.these insects down? 

 During tho past summer the larvaj of tho species in question had again appeared in 

 formidable swarms on Boston Common and vicinity, yet tho number of sparrows had 

 probably quadrupled every year. 



Mr. H. A. Purdie observed that last summer ho published, in the Boston Advertiser 

 of July 30, a short article, speaking of tho hordes of caterpillars that had then been 

 infesting the trees of the common, and of Bowdoiu street ; and later, their cocoons 



