THE ENGLISH SPARROW. 155 



upon the subject. A case in point was the campaign in 

 Boston about three years ago, when the park commissioners 

 destroyed the nests by the thousand, the result being such a 

 commotion in the public prints as has rarely been witnessed 

 in connection with any natural history event. Besides the 

 hundreds of columns of letters, advertisements like this 

 appeared in the papers : "Friends of the sparrows, who are 

 willing to have their names used in a remonstrance against 

 their proposed destruction, are requested to send their names 

 and addresses to the Massachusetts Society for the Preven- 

 tion of Cruelty to Animals, 19 Milk Street, Boston." The 

 society which inserted this advertisement asked permission to 

 erect bird-houses for the sparrows in the public parks. The 

 commissioners finally gave up their efforts, although no greater 

 evidence of the practical uselessness of the sparrows could 

 be asked than the fact that in the very parks in which they 

 were living so abundantly the tussock caterpillars were nu- 

 merous upon the elm-trees. 



