How to Attract the Birds 



various places from Sandy Hook to Iowa the San 

 Francisco and other western colonies were not 

 started until 1875 but corporations took up the 

 task of introducing them into cities where the 

 measuring worms hung from every tree and dropped 

 on every passer-by, only to be crushed under foot 

 until the sidewalks were disgusting. Philadelphia 

 alone imported a thousand sparrows. People benev- 

 olently disposed sent them to friends in distant 

 states; they protected, fed, housed and coddled 

 them. Meanwhile the birds, which needed nobody's 

 care, being fit to survive if ever creature was, multi- 

 plied enormously, and soon escaped from the cities 

 to towns, and from towns to villages, but always 

 keeping near man, for a parasitical existence ever 

 suits them best. The hardships and dangers of the 

 wild, independent state are carefully avoided by these 

 little tramps. By 1870 they had gained a foothold in 

 twenty states, the District of Columbia, and two 

 Canadian provinces. Now only Alaska, Arizona, 

 Montana, Nevada and New Mexico remain to be in- 

 vaded. In an old number of the "Transactions of 

 the New York Academy of Sciences" there is an ac- 

 count by a local ornithologist of his visit to Madison 

 Square to see if he could find some English Spar- 

 rows which, he had heard, might be seen there. 

 Though written less than forty years ago, it reads 

 like a page of ancient history. 



As the "yellow peril" is to human immigration, 

 so is this sparrow to other birds. It is true he ban- 

 ished the measuring caterpillar from our cities and 

 helps destroy the seeds of crab-grass, dandelions, and 

 other noxious weeds on our lawns; but so numerous 



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