the roads; in February, March, April, and May it is 

 much the same corn, mingled with seeds, buds of 

 gooseberries, young tops of peas, turnip and hay-seed, 

 &c. ; in June corn, peas and seeds of various sorts ; in 

 July and August ditto. After that they mix the corn 

 with considerable quantities of wild seeds, including, 

 be it freely admitted, the destructive knot-grass and 

 corn-bindweed ; but even then they take corn by 

 preference. 



I do not think Mr. Morris can have noticed this 

 table, or he would hardly say what he does. 



Neither would he say that Sparrows have done as 

 much good as harm in America since their intro- 

 duction* (' Sparrow-Shooter/ p. 5) if he had read 

 what our American cousins of late years have written 

 about them. On this head let me merely draw his 

 attention to what Dr. Elliott Coues says at page 52 

 of Mr. Wesley's book, which is only a sample of a 

 hundred other testimonies to the detestation in which 

 they are now held in the United States, and to a Report 

 on the subject by a Committee of the American Orni- 

 thologists' Union, published last year, and reprinted, 

 though not in extenso, in Miss Ormerod's ' Ninth 

 Report on Injurious Insects' t- The Committee's Report 

 may be seen in the ' Forest and Stream' newspaper of 

 August 6, 1885 J. It is impossible, in my humble 

 judgment, for any one to read the testimony therein 

 contained and think that Sparrows have done good in 

 the United States. 



* Into Maine in 1858 (Gentry's ' House-Sparrow/ p. 33). 



t Mr. Morris is not very complimentary to Miss Ormerod, whose 

 efforts to sift the matter in an impartial spirit deserve different, 

 recognition. 



I A copy of which any one interested in the matter will find at 

 the library of the Zoological Society in Hanover Square. 



