160 THE ENGLISH SPARROW IN AMERICA. 



many valuable native birds would be destroyed and the State would pay 

 bounties unwittingly on the heads of some of its best friends. 



(11) It must be borne in mind that the money expended in bounties 

 by no means represents the entire expense of a bounty law. To this 

 sum must be added not only the cost of incidentals, such as fire-arms, 

 ammunition, grain for baiting, poison, traps, nets, etc. — items often small 

 in themselves, but amounting to considerable sums in the aggregate — 

 but also the cost of advertising the bounty, examining and paying 

 claims, and destroying heads. 



It has been suggested that the bounty money, however great the 

 amount, might be raised by taxation, and eventually would be returned 

 to the very people who paid the taxes. But a moment's thought will 

 convince any one that this argument is utterly fallacious. The taxes 

 would be collected necessarily from all citizens, whether they sustained 

 any injury from Sparrows or not, and yet not one citizen in one hundred 

 would kill any Sparrows or receive any bounty, since few men could 

 afford to neglect their business for the sake of securing a few dollars a 

 week in bounties. Thus the bulk of the money would go to people hav- 

 ing no regular occupation and little or no taxable property. In this 

 way it is true the money would be kept in the State, and, provided all 

 the Sparrows were, killed, the State would reap the benefit, but the 

 money itself would not return to those who contributed it. 



The suggestion has been made that, as the bodies of all Sparrows 

 killed by other means than poison might be utilized for food, a Sparrow- 

 killer could collect the bounty on the head and realize an additional 

 profit from the sale of the body ; so that the bounty might be very 

 small and prove effective nevertheless. But in many places there is 

 absolutely no market for Sparrows at any price; and, if there were, it is 

 doubtful if the heads alone would be sufficient for identification when 

 presented for bounty to the proper officer. 



Again, it is claimed by some that all destruction of Sparrows, caused 

 by the offer of a bounty, would be additional to the destruction already 

 going on without expense to the State; and it is further urged that the 

 natural checks on the Sparrow's increase would lessen still further the 

 number on which bounties could be paid. In regard to the first claim 

 it need only be said that it is an assumption not only unsupported by 

 any facts at ail, but rendered improbable by all the evidence bearing 

 on the question. There is every reason to believe that independent, 

 unpaid persecution of the Sparrows would cease almost entirely as soon 

 as a bounty law became operative. 



The second claim may be conceded without argument, but in the fore- 

 going estimates due allowance was made for the effects of natural 

 checks by assuming at the outset an extremely low rate of increase. 



To those who see thousands of Sparrows daily, perching familiarly 

 on their window-sills or hopping unconcernedly about the streets, it 

 seems an easy thing to kill them by scores or hundreds, and many peo- 

 ple believe that any wide- awake boy could trap a thousand a day, and 



