Brewer.] 260 [December 5, 



Dr. T. M. Brewer announced the donation, for the New- 

 England collection, of six mounted species of birds, the gift 

 of Mr. Wra. Brewster of Cambridge, and of eight mounted 

 specimens from Mr. Arthur Smith of Brookline, for which 

 the thanks of the Society were voted. Dr. Brewer men- 

 tioned that he had also procured an interesting specimen 

 for the same department from Mr. Welch, of Lynn. It was 

 pronounced by Prof. Baird and Mr. Ridgway to be an imma- 

 ture Ammodramus maritimus, in the plumage regarded by 

 Audubon as a distinct species, and called by him MacGil- 

 livray's Finch. This restores the species to Massachusetts, 

 in which its presence has been denied. The individual in 

 question was shot at Nahant. 



At the desire of the President, Dr. Brewer gave a brief 

 account of his observations relative to the Sulphur-crested 

 caterpillar (Orgyia leuco stigma), and the circumstances 

 under which it is devoured by the House Sparrow. 



In the summer of 1868 and 1869, these insects had become 

 exceptionally abundant in the city generally, and especially on 

 the Common. In the winter of 1870-71, having occasion to cross 

 the Common several times in the day, he noticed numbers of the 

 sparrows, though then comparatively few, busily engaged in the 

 destruction of the cocoons. This was continued through the winter, 

 and again in the following winter, and was observed by others be- 

 sides himself. In 1874 he published, in the " Sportsman," an account 

 of his observations, having no doubt that the total disappearance of 

 this insect from the Common, and from all of the city south of the 

 Common, was directly owing to the intervention of the sparrow. A 

 gentleman in New York, in a private letter, questioned the accuracy 

 of his conclusions, because in certain streets of that city this cater- 

 pillar remained, in spite of the sparrow, and Dr. Oliver also called 

 his attention to its presence in Joy Street, in Boston. How to ex- 

 plain these apparent incongruities, was not at first possible, and the 

 two following summers he was in Europe. The present summer a 

 writer in the "Advertiser" called attention to the abundance of this 

 insect on the Common as evidence that the sparrows can not be de- 

 pended upon for their destruction. Here were their cocoons all 



