148 REPORT UPON COTTON INSECTS. 



however, a most positive influence. These are bluebirds, -white-bellied swallows, 

 purple martins, and wrens birds of attractive ways, agreeable notes, and highly in- 

 sectivorous in their diet. When the sparrows were first introduced in Cambridge, 

 probably at least a dozen bird-houses were put up to each pair of sparrows. The 

 result was that the native species just mentioned found abundant nesting-places, and 

 at once became more abundant than formerly. As the sparrows rapidly increased, 

 they very naturally possessed themselves of the bird-boxes and forced their former 

 occupants elsewhere. He cited the following instances as having fallen under hia 

 observation : 



Three years ago no less than three pairs of wrens and as many pairs each of blue- 

 birds aud white-bellied swallows raised their young in boxes in sight of his windows. 

 The following year one-half disappeared, and last year not one of these nine pairs of 

 native birds had a representative left within this small area. Not that all the boxes 

 were occupied by the sparrows, but they claimed possession of all and by force of 

 numbers retained them. In most cases the former occupants, finding their homes 

 already in the possession of their enemies, appeared to make no struggle to regain 

 them, a reconnaissance of the field apparently satisfying them of the hopelessness of 

 any such attempt ; in other cases they were not given up without long and hard-fought 

 battles. On inquiry he found that similar incidents have been observed in neighbor- 

 ing parts of Cambridge. Besides this, instances of uncalled-for aggression had come 

 to his notice, one of which he had himself observed. Last year a colony of sparrows, 

 not content with three times as many boxes as they had use for, to gain possession of 

 whirh they had dispossessed wrens and swallows, attacked a pair of robins that very 

 unwisely, as it proved, had chosen a nesting-site in an elm close to this pugnacious 

 colony, by which they were so persistently harassed that they had to abandon their 

 completed nest and its, to them, precious contents. 



In this connection Mr. Allen read a- communication from Mr. Robert Ridgway, of 

 "Washington, D. C., in relation to the effect of the sparrows upon tho native birds, in 

 which Mr. Ridgway stated that since the appearance of the house sparrow in that 

 city, the native species, including suchbright-colored and musical birds as the Balti- 

 more and orchard oriole and blue-birds, as well as purple martins, cat-birds, song- 

 sparrows, &c., have nearly abandoned the city. Before the sparrows came these and 

 others were abundant in all the public parks and reservations. The sparrows have 

 now spread in strong force throughout the city, and the native birds have either in 

 part or entirely disappeared, the sparrows abounding to the " almost utter exclusion 

 of other birds." These he gives as the facts of the case, without claiming that the 

 increase of tho sparrows and the decrease of the indigenous species held tho relation 

 of "cause and effect." The native species, he claims, combine all the praiseworthy 

 traits possessed by tho sparrows with either beauty of plumage or the gift of song, 

 neither of which qualities belong to the introduced birds. He regards the latter as 

 only exceptionally insectivorous, while the species they supplant are prominently so. 

 He also alludes to the well-known habits of the sparrows as street birds, from which 

 source they derive a large share of their food. 



Mr. Allen further stated that every ornithologist of note throughout the country 

 who has expressed himself upon the subject (and nearly all have done so) has, almost 

 without exception, declared against the sparrow. Not a few of them consider their 

 rapid increase an alarming evil, that will soon call for legislative action to hold it in 

 check. Their influence upon the native species is on all sides spoken of as deleterious. 

 They are aggressive and pugnacious by nature, and, if not by actual aciacks upon 

 the native birds, will crowd them out by their excessive numbers. The introduced 

 sparrow is to a greater extent a granivorous feeder than most of our own species of the 

 same family, and subsists upon an insect diet only exceptionally, and not as a rule, as 

 is the case with many of the species their unchecked increase will most surely sup- 

 plant. They were, however, ostensibly introduced for tho purpose of keeping in check 

 certain insect pests, and in some cases seem to have been of service in this regard. 



