_ 1878.) Lneligibility of the European House Sparrow. "503 
fact is suppressed, explained away, or flatly denied, according to 
the disingenuousness, the aptitude for quibbling, or the audacity 
of the third and fourth categories of persons above described. 
It is attested, however, by numberless competent and veracious 
eye-witnesses. 
3- They commit great depredations in the kitchen-garden, the 
orchard and the grain-field. We are only as yet on the very 
threshold of this matter, yet how obvious it is! And what may 
be expected, when, instead of a few hundred million sparrows, we 
have the millions of millions which will be ours in a few years, 
_ if we persist in this folly. 
4. They are personally obnoxious and unpleasant to many 
persons. For myself, I “ rather like” them too; they rather 
amuse and interest me, and are not at all disagreeable, as long as 
I can keep their disastrous results out of mind. I am not a deli- 
cate woman, nor yet a squeamish man, to be shocked by their 
perpetual antics during the spring and summer ; being something 
of an anatomist I can stand it without embarrassment ; but all are 
not thus constituted. Neither am I a nervous invalid, to be 
fretted and annoyed into positive illness by the incessant turmoil 
at the window; but others are. Nor do I, I regret to say, own a 
house where the steps and window-sills and: trellis-work and 
lawn are so befilthed that none of my servants will stay if 
they have to clean up after the birds; others, however, are in 
such case. I grant that this is all a matter of taste, rather than 
of science; but such as it is, it is largely against the sparrows. 
5. They have, at present, practically no natural enemies, nor 
any check whatever upon limitless increase. This would be 
undesirable, even in the case of the most desirable birds. As the 
Case stands we are repeating the history of the white weed and the 
orway rat} 
I have to make one suggestion and to offer two recommenda- 
Dois * 
Itisa fact, that with all this talk and counter-talk about the 
Jood of the sparrow, and to what extent it may feed upon insects - 
injurious to our fruit and shade trees, nobody has yet made the 
_ €Xperiments obviously necessary to determine exactly what the 
1A writer in the London Garden says: “It may be remembered that in one of 
_ the back numbers of the 4 Garden,” I mentioned that the introduction of the spar- 
Tow would turn out to be a great mistake, and they are now finding this out.” 
