22 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



and Jays are such enemies of better-behaved birds, that one 

 may look unmoved upon their sable plumes or sky-blue 

 wings, even on a woman's hat. The Shrikes {La?iiidcB) are 

 also cruel butchers of small song birds ; but they are so 

 largely insectivorous that in striking a balance of their good 

 and evil deeds the account would probably be squared. The 

 Cowbird {Alolothrus ater) is a peculiarly insidious foe to many 

 of our most useful insect-eating song birds. The old-world 

 Sparrow (Passer domesticus), which we fatuously imported a 

 few years ago, for expected services as an alleged insecticide, 

 though fitted for that role neither by nature nor by art, is 

 another enemy, by no means insidious, but offensively ag- 

 gressive, obtrusively turbulent, ubiquitously noisy, dirty, and 

 a nuisance — the only instance of total depravity in the bird- 

 world, the only sinner beyond hope of redemption, the only 

 outlaw upon whose scalp our lawmakers should set a price. 

 Millions of dollars would not pay for the damage annually 

 done by the Sparrow, both direct!}', in destruction of crops, 

 and indirectly, by interfering with the good offices of in- 

 sectivorous native birds. 



The foregoing are the chief if not the only cases which we 

 find on the wrong side of the ledger in consequence of harm 

 done to distinctively useful birds, and thus indirectly to 

 man. Let us look at some exemplary damages we may seek 

 to recover for our direct injuries. 



Among birds which feed upon cereals, and therefore destroy 

 crops to a greater or lesser extent, are the related families 

 Corvidce and Ictcridce. In the former, the Crow is the most 

 conspicuous — that much-abused bird, whose case has so 

 long been in litigation — that astute, many-sided, alternately 

 lustrous and shady character, whose activities have given us 

 a household word — " scarecrow." The brief in this case 

 would seem to be this : the Crow is as omnivorous as any 

 bird can be ; he is equally insectivorous and granivorous ; he 

 does at least as much good as harm; the verdict is "not 

 proven ; " he may be given the benefit of the doubt, and 



