154 REPORT UPON COTTON INSECTS. 



may have half a dozen at a time. They are safely housed from their natural enemies; 

 rather, they have no special enemies in this country, and such enemies as their exces- 

 sive abundance might raise up against them have, in at least one case, been summarily 

 disposed of, as in the silly action of the Bostonian regarding the shrikes. There is 

 thus practically no check upon their limitless multiplication, and they are insidiously 

 multiplying at a rate that perhaps few suspect. A short ten years ago a sparroAv was 

 something of a sight anywhere ; now the millions we have are countless. The spar- 

 rows have played mischief enough already, I know, but I say deliberately that this 

 is nothing to what the next decade or two will witness if this desperate sparrow-mania 

 goes on. "We may have before long people knocking at the Congressional gates for an 

 appropriation for a sparrow commission, like the Grasshopper Commission now sitting, 

 to consider if there be any available relief from the scourge. When the sparrows over- 

 flow into all the country and they are beginning to do so already and settle in hordes 

 on the grain-fields, a good many will doubtless be destroyed by the birds and beasts 

 of prey, but it may then be too late. At present, an occasional stone from some idle 

 boy, or an occasional cat on the woodshed, are all the sparrow has to look out for. 



" I think it will be evident that the argumcntum ad Europeam cannot logically apply 

 here. I have dwelt upon it because it is the only show of reason I find in my worthier 

 opponents ; yet it is fallacious, thoroughly fallacious. The crude observations of the 

 less worthy, the misrepresentations and tergiversations of interested persons, and all 

 vociferations of the pyrgitomaniacs are wasted in a case like this, or are not wasted 

 only in so far as they serve to dress up a melodramatic spectacle, at seeing which well- 

 informed persons usually smile. The philopasserites may be reminded that sentiment 

 is not science, the present being a question of applied or economic science ; that satire, 

 ridicule, and sophistry, however potent in the political or theological arena, are im- 

 potent in the field of science. 



" For the common good as well as for the benefit of those who may care to defend 

 the sparrows, I make the following specifications of my general charge against these 

 birds. 



" 1. They neglect entirely, or perform very insufficiently, the business they were im- 

 ported to do. In spite of some good service at one season of the year in a few par- 

 ticular localities against some particular kinds of insects, the state of our shade-trees 

 remains substantially as it was before their introduction. Some of the decrease of 

 noxious insects at times is due to their periodical decrease, with which the sparrows 

 have nothing to do; and in spite of assertions to the contrary, people are still scraping 

 trees and still employing the usual defenses against insects in precisely those places 

 where it was said that the sparrows had done the business. 



"2. They attack, harass, fight against, dispossess, drive away, and sometimes act- 

 ually kill various of our native birds which are much more insectivorous by nature 

 than themselves, and which might do us better service if they were equally encouraged. 

 This fact is suppressed, explained away, or flatly denied, according to the disingen- 

 uousness, the aptitude for quibbling, or the audacity of the third and fourth catego- 

 ries of persons above described. It is attested, however, by numberless competent and 

 veracious eye-witnesses. 



" 3. They commit great depredations in the kitchen-garden, the orchard, and the 

 grain-field. We are only as yet on the very threshold of this matter, yet how obvious 

 it is. And what may be expected, when, instead of a few hundred million sparrows, 

 we have the millions of millions which will be ours in a few years if we persist in 

 this folly. 



"4. They are personally obnoxious and unpleasant to many persons. For myself, 'I 

 rather like them too ; they rather amuse and interest me and are not at all disagreeable, 

 as long as I can keep their disastrous results out of mind. I am not a delicate woman 

 nor yet a sqeamishman, to be shocked by their perpetual antics during thespringand 

 summer; being something of an anatomist, I can stand it without embarrassment, but 

 all are not so constituted. Neither am I a nervous invalid, to be fretted and annoyed 



