CHAPTER VI. 



UPON IMPORTED SONG BIRDS. 



IN 1889 and again in 1892, some of the Ger- 

 man-American citizens of Portland, with char- 

 acteristic poetic taste and love of Nature, and 

 out of affectionate remembrance of associations 

 in the Fatherland, secured the importation of 

 several varieties of their native song-birds. 



The Skylark, as we have seen, is one of these, 

 and it alone has repaid and will increasingly, in 

 all time to come, repay the cost and the trouble 

 incurred in settling the stranger songsters upon 

 the Pacific coast. The author, however, sympa- 

 thizes to some extent with the great body of 

 ornithologists in this country who do not believe 

 in taking birds from the environment which 

 formed them and placing them in another. It 

 seems to be a violation of natural and aesthetic 

 laws. Again, another imported bird besides 

 the English Sparrow, the Starling, has already 

 become harmful on the Atlantic coast, where it 



