THE | 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xu.— AUGUST, 1878. — No. 8. 
— — 
THE INELIGIBILITY OF THE EUROPEAN HOUSE 
SPARROW IN AMERICA. 
BY DR. ELLIOTI COURS, USA, 
T is very regretable that the “sparrow question,” which has 
already become a matter of national moment, should have 
degenerated into such a miserable personal controversy between 
the sentimentalists who misrepresent the facts and the ornitholo- 
gists who understand them, that a prudent person, whatever his 
views, might refrain from having anything to do with it. But it is 
With me a matter of conscientious discharge of my duty to place the 
facts properly before the people, that they may be informed and 
warned in time, before the pest shall have become ineradicable. 
I do not write for ornithologists; for, so far as Iam aware, there 
is not a scientific ornithologist in America, among those who 
have expressed any decided opinion, who are in favor of the 
wretched interlopers which we have so thoughtlessly introduced, 
and played with, and cuddled, like a parcel of hysterical, slate- 
pencil-eating school-girls. I have held a tight rein on this con- 
troversy from the first, and probably know more of its inside 
history than any other person; and I am in position to affirm 
that the sneers, the invectives, the ridicule and abuse, and the 
Wild assertions of the leader or leaders of the pro-sparrow fac- 
tion, result from a frantic despair in the face of the facts which 
_ Ornithologists coolly adduce. The fact that the sparrow is a 
~ Nuisance in a variety of ways, that it does not do any appreciable 
Sood, that it does a very obvious amount of damage, that it 
harasses, drives off and sometimes destroys useful native birds, 
_ and that it has no place in the natural economy of this country, 
3 are patent to every one who will take the trouble to see for him- i 
_ Self. These. same facts, some or all, are disagreeably obvious to 
VOL, XI1.—wno VIII. 35 
