52 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



more carefully investigated before it was imported. On one 

 estate in England, the sparrows had been destroyed regularly 

 and the gardens and orchards there seemed directly to flourish 

 very much better. The insectivorous birds being protected do 

 their work fully and do it very much better. The English spar- 

 row is very pugnacious and drives off the other birds. It is 

 found not to be insectivorous. The result of stomach examina- 

 tion shows this very fully. He eats grain, and is known to be 

 graminivorous almost wholly, and so, in a way, destructive. 

 But in places where the English Sparrow has been driven away, 

 that is, systematically killed oif, as it has been at Green Hill, 

 our native birds do their work finely. I do not know whether 

 there is any other place near here where they are driven away, 

 but they are not allowed at Green Hill, and that is one of the 

 best places in Worcester to find our native birds. Our native 

 birds are so valuable economically and aesthetically that certainly 

 they deserve complete protection, and in order to protect them 

 it seems that a great deal might be done in planting native 

 shrubs. Unfortunately, the New Englander in his zeal to have 

 everything trim cuts down the underbrush and that is just what 

 the birds need. An ideal farm would have all the native shrubs, 

 the berry-bearing shrubs, along stone walls with all the natural 

 undergrowth, and this too along the roadsides. This is so per- 

 sistently cleaned out that the birds do not have the opportunity 

 to do their best work, because the larvje of so many insects 

 takes that form either on or in the ground and the birds must 

 work about the ground in order to pick them up. So if we can 

 only have this shrubbery, — the hackberry, that is so productive 

 to birds, the pokeberry, a great many birds enjoy that and it is 

 really a beautiful shrub with wonderful color in its branches, 

 and if it only came from foreign parts would be greatly prized, 

 viburnum, the dogwood, bittersweet, and a great many other 

 of the native shrubs, — and far fewer English Sparrows, I am sure 

 the birds would do a great deal of work that has to be done now 

 by hand in order to get rid of the noxious insects. 



