146 REPORT UPON COTTON INSECTS. 



apparently of service in New York City in destroying canker-worms ; but last year 

 worms were very abundant in the gardens of that city and not interferred with by the 

 birds. In America he had never observed them molest grain, but in Egypt he had 

 seen them feeding in the fields in flocks of many hundred, and on shooting them their 

 crops were found to contain only grain. He had often watched them assault snow- 

 birds, song and chipping sparrows, and had known them to kill a yellow-billed wood- 

 pecker, actually mobbing it to death. Other birds, as purple martins, he knew 

 they had driven away by occupying their boxes very early in the spring. This im- 

 migrant had spread into the surrounding country, and at West Point, on the Hud- 

 son, land owners had been obliged to shoot them, as they destroyed the buds of fruit 

 trees and drove away the song birds. * 



Mr. Ruthven Deane stated that he had repeatedly seen the sparrows attack and drive 

 off our native species. These instances were witnessed both on Boston Common and 

 in gardens in Cambridge. He referred to one instance where a white-bellied swallow 

 returned to her nest in a martin-house attached to the trunk of an elm ; a cockney 

 sparrow (which had not previously been reared in the box, nor had any of his ffcices- 

 tors) was perched upon the ridge-pole, and disputed the swallow's right by attacking 

 and forcing her to the ground, and leaving her only to resume his position on the ridge- 

 pole. 



Mr. Deane also read the following letter, which, though addressed to Dr. Brewer, 

 was recently sent (apparently as an "open letter") to Mr. Deane for publication: 



"Dr. T. M. BREWER: 



"DEAR SIR: I want to ask of you a reply to these facts, in regard to the diet of 

 English sparrows habituated to our climate, which I have with the greatest care ob- 

 tained, and with no prejudice, of course, to the scientific results : Last season I obtained 

 39 individual sparrows, during the height of the canker-worm pest, in the Jamaica 

 Plain district (near Boston) ; about an equal number of males and females. These 

 birds had been allowed to gather any food they liked, and their houses were placed in 

 the midst of several elms infested with worms. On dissection no insect or worm, whole 

 or in part, could be found in their digestive tract even with the glass, but grain, oats, 

 seeds, and gravel, alone gave evidence, distinct in these cases, of a granivorous life. 

 I have never, as yet, met with a like series of experiments on your part, and hence I 

 desire to have a brief reason for your assertions to the contrary in different papers. 

 " I am, very respectfully, 



JOHN DIXWELL, M. D. 



HOTEL BOYLSTOX, Boston, January 3, 1878." 



Messrs. C. F. Batchelder and Walter Woodman both supported Messrs. Minot's and 

 Deane's statements as to the decrease of many singing-birds in Cambridge, and espe- 

 cially that of the house- wren, a most valuable insect-destroyer. 



Mr. A. M. Frayer, of Watertown, remarked that he did not think we should look 

 into the city to see what we are to expect from the house-sparrow, but to the suburbs, 

 where it is yet living in a more natural condition. This last summer a flock of about 

 a dozen took up their residence near a small patch of standing rye, and before it was 

 time to harvest the grain the gourmands had eaten every kernel and beaten down the 

 straw. On Long Island, New York, the native birds, for the last five years, had been 

 steadily decreasing as the alien increased. 



Mr. J. A. Allen stated that, although he had hitherto purposely kept out of the spar- 

 row controversy, it had not been from any lack of interest in the subject. He had 

 believed the subject to be not so one-sided as many have assumed; that the sparrows 



Plenty of confirmatory evidence is observable in New York City to-day, although 

 here no public provision is made for feeding the sparrows. In City Hall Square, par- 

 ticularly, the cocoons of Orgyia moths are to be seen in large quantities on both elms 

 and maples. In many cases the bird-boxes in these trees at present inhabited by the 

 sparrows are almost completely covered by a crowded thatch of chrysalids. ED. 



