BIRDS THAT PREY AND SOME THAT DO NOT 489 



and neither have birds. The American people did 

 not appreciate their own birds nor realize the 

 almost incredible number of insects destroyed by 

 the white-throated swallows, the purple martin, 

 and the wrens. Becoming tired of the beautiful 

 bluebirds and the other native feathered Ameri- 

 cans, the Honorable Nicholas Pike of the Brooklyn 

 Institute worked from 1850 to 1853, introducing 

 the noisy, dirty, gutter-loving, English sparrow to 

 take the place of the birds just mentioned. 



The United States Government has since pub- 

 lished a book of over four hundred pages warning 

 people against the English sparrows; this volume 

 also gives suggestions and advice tending to the 

 final extermination of the sparrow. But the spar- 

 row does not know it and he is flourishing and in- 

 creasing as rapidly now as he did before the book 

 was published, and all his crimes and misdeeds pro- 

 claimed to the world. 



In a weak moment the inhabitants of Jamaica 

 introduced the old world mongoose for the pur- 

 pose of exterminating rats which devastate the cane 

 fields. 



Now they say that the mongoose drove the rats 

 into the cocoa trees ; ate up the useful insect-eating 

 lizards; devoured the harmless rat-killing roof 

 snakes ; destroyed the game birds and insect-eating 

 birds; raided the nests of pigeons and domestic 

 fowls ; fattened on suckling pigs and newly born 

 farm animals; all but exterminated the famous 

 edible black crabs and in many other ways proved 



