308 THE ENGLISH SPARROW IN AMERICA. 



This year the web caterpillars have been unusually abundant in the neighborhood 

 of Sing Sing. They are found crawling everywhere in the village. After they had 

 stripped a mulberry tree that grows at the end of the piazza, they seized upon this 

 Virginia creeper. A number of them are now denuding it, and at length have dis- 

 closed the covered angle of the chimney where the Sparrows had their cosy roosts. 

 Such behavior on the part of the caterpillars has been too much for the Sparrows. 

 They have had to give way and move off. This time the Sparrows have been driven 

 out by the worms. — A. H. G. [Rev. A. H. Gesner], Sing Sing, N. Y. 



[Forest and Stream, VoL XXX, pp. 204-205, April 5, 1888.] 

 NOTES ON THE ENGLISH SPARROW, PASSER DOMESTIC US. 



By Ernest E. Thompson, of Toronto, Canada. 



The marvelous rapidity with which the English Sparrow has multiplied and is mul- 

 tiplying on this continent, its evident capability of spreading still farther, and the 

 probability of its eventually occupying the whole of agricultural America to the ex- 

 clusion of many beneficial species of native birds, combined with the reiterated and 

 increasing clamor of complaints against, the species, have at length induced several 

 of the State Departments of Agriculture in America, first, to accept the fact that this 

 bird is a tremendous power in the agricultural economy of the country; second, to 

 follow with the question, is it a power for good or for evil ? 



It is worthy of notice that there are still many persons who deny that the Sparrow 

 can ever make its influence felt in this country in any economic direction. For the 

 benefit of these I will briefly refer to the depredations of the species in England, where 

 not only the cities but also the villages and barn-yards are populous with Sparrows; 

 and in the south of England the farmers are compelled to expend considerable sums 

 annually to keep down the hordes of these marauders, for the experience of centuries 

 has taught the farmer that the Sparrow is an unmitigated nuisance. I myself have 

 seen acres and acres of grain fields in southern England that have been so thoroughly 

 devastated by Sparrows that they were not worth the cutting. All investigations 

 that have ever been conducted in England have, so far as I can learn, resulted in a 

 verdict most unequivocally damnatory of the Sparrow ; and yet, in the face of this, 

 private persons and corporations, swayed not by facts, but by the same foolish sen- 

 timent which prompted the introduction of the Scottish thistle to Van Dieman's 

 Land, have introduced and encouraged this pest in this the greatest of agricultural 

 countries. What wonder that the English farmer stared in blank amazement when 

 first he heard of it, or that he failed to account for the action except ou the assump- 

 tion that America had been visited by a wave of temporary insanity. 



It has been often argued that, so far as we Canadians are concerned, the Sparrow 

 can never give us much trouble, as the climatic and other conditions are sufficient to 

 prevent its increasing to the same extent as in England. But unfortunately the facts 

 are sufficient to entirely dispel this illusion. The first time that I saw the Sparrow 

 in Toronto was, I think, in 1874, when a single pair was observed. Since then it has 

 gone on increasing until now the natural sources of maintenance are taxed to the ut- 

 most, and each successive brood as it attains maturity is compelled to migrate to some 

 distant locality where the struggle for life is less severe. This process of multiplica- 

 tion and migration has gone on yearly, each of our large cities being centers of supply, 

 until now every town and nearly every village in Ontario is thoroughly stocked with 

 Sparrows, and when this occupation is complete they will unquestionably spread over 

 the intervening farm lands. 



The severity of the winter was confidently pointed out as an efficient check, but 

 there is every evidence to prove that the Sparrow can live as far northward as wheat 

 can be grown with success. At Bracebridgo and Gravenhurst the species has long 

 been established, and at North Bay, Lake Nipissing, which I visited in January, 1887, 

 1 found the English Sparrow in full force and possession. 



