December 18, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



541 



volume ever saw the light. Mr. Benjamin's article 

 was singled out by Messrs. Lattimore and Remington 

 as worthy of the first prize, probably because of the 

 following ' practical and otherwise valuable ' infor- 

 mation which it contains: "All that is required to 

 immediately purify and sweeten a contaminated air- 

 supply, however originated, is to dip a cloth in the 

 liquid (a solution of nitrate of lead and common salt), 

 and hang it up in the apartment." Or perhaps they 

 thought sulphate of iron, charcoal, and table salt 

 were of much greater value than chlorinated lime, 

 mercuric chloride, or mercuric iodide. Their fathers 

 thought so, and therefore the new-fangled notions 

 of bacteriologists must be disregarded as unscientific 

 and impractical. They believed that Dr. Baker's 

 special training as a physician, and his experience as 

 founder of the state board of health of Michigan, as 

 well as member of the committee on disinfectants of 

 the National board of health, unfitted him as a judge 

 of such matters. In spite of his earnest protests, 

 they insisted upon giving the first prize to a paper 

 which he declared was unworthy any prize. Their 

 special training as analytical and pharmaceutical 

 chemists fitted them for just such work, because they 

 knew nothing of Pasteur or Magnin, Koch or Miguel, 

 Sternberg or Klein, other than they happened to see 

 in the Rochester post or Philadelphia ledger. 



G. 

 Brooklyn, Dec. 11. 



The English sparrow. 



The despised sparrow is entitled to a good word if 

 he can secure it. He has come to stay, and no amount 

 of vituperation will displace him. ' He is too many,' 

 and has spread over too large a portion of the union. 

 The sparrows crossed the Mississippi River at Clinton, 

 lo., about 1875, and have increased largely. They 

 confine themselves principally to the railroad build- 

 ings and some of the business blocks, though they 

 occasionally nest on private houses. 



When this town was founded, twenty-five years 

 ago, there were no trees or shrubbery near, and con- 

 sequently few birds. Now the town looks like a forest 

 in the distance. The consequence is that robins, 

 thrashes, orioles, blackbirds, bluebirds, and many 

 other birds, are very numerous, and seem to be in- 

 creasing. Numbers of blue jays nest in the shade- 

 trees, and stay with us during winter. The spar- 

 rows have never seemed to drive any away, as each 

 year more nests of summer birds have been observed. 

 They confine themselves to the open spaces and 

 streets, and do not nest or frequent the trees or 

 shrubbery. They have never been observed in the 

 fields outside of town, and do no injury to fruit or 

 seeds in gardens. They live largely on insects, as has 

 been shown by examining their crops. In winter 

 they are mainly dependent on the seeds and grains 

 they can pick up. They fall victims to the jays and 

 the butcher birds, but a crowd of them makes a good 

 fight against the aggressors. There are millions of 

 them in every large town, on the railroads of this 

 state, and there is no way of exterminating them, 

 and no wish to on the part of unprejudiced people. 

 There is no law for their protection in this state, only 

 a general friendliness toward them as toward all 

 small birds. P. J. Farnsworth. 



Clinton, lo., Dec. 10. 



It must be admitted that the English house-sparrow 

 -will eat seeds and fniit, but it should be remembered 



that the young sparrows are fed chiefly on insects 

 and caterpillars ; and a good English authority (^Yar- 

 rell) observes that " so great is the number of these 

 consumed by the parent birds and their successive 

 broods of young, that it is a question whether the 

 benefit thus performed is not an equivalent even for 

 the grain and seeds eaten by the adult birds at other 

 seasons of the year." 



Dr. Elliott Coues, in his notes to Fiteams' ' New 

 England birds,' advocates the extermination of the 

 English sparrow, and calls it ' the parasite.' This is 

 not a translation of its scientific name, Passer do- 

 raesticus, and does not accord with any known habit 

 of the birds in question. Dr. Coues has no fault to 

 find with a native tree-sparrow (Spizella monticola), 

 which he says exists in large quantities, and feeds 

 only on grain and seeds. All specimens shot by Dr. 

 Coues had their crops full of seeds. 



The sparrows which damage the crops and orchards 

 in England are another species, called the field-spar- 

 row. I have seen these m flocks of over a thousand 

 rise at one time from a field of grain. This is, I 

 presume, the bird described by Dr. Coues as Passer 

 montanus. He states they are now found in New 

 England, but I never heard of their having been 

 imported. 



I rather doubt the stories about the English spar- 

 rows molesting the bluebirds at breeding time. It 

 is well known that most birds are very pugnacious 

 at this period, and I am personally acquainted with 

 the fact that bluebirds are particularly courageous 

 at this season. On one occasion a bluebird made its 

 nest in my garden, in the hollow of a tree, about six 

 feet from the ground. One day, when busy inspect- 

 ing the nest, I received a violent blow on the side of 

 the head, and, on looking up, saw the parent bluebird 

 flying away. I found that whenever I placed my 

 hand in the nest, I was attacked in this manner. I 

 apprehend, that, if a bluebird will attack a man in 

 defence of its nest, it is not likely that a sparrow 

 would do so with impunity. 



I notice that Dr. Bechstein, in his standard work 

 on birds, published as one of Bohn's library, states, 

 that although the house-sparrow has no sonar, he can 

 be educated to sing equal to the canary. I was also 

 surprised to find in the same work (p. 249) that the 

 house-sparrow could be taught to speak: it men- 

 tions a clergyman of Paris who had two of these birds 

 which could repeat the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh 

 commandments. It is gravely stated that when these 

 birds quarrelled over their food, " one of them would 

 admonish the other with the remark, ' Tu ne voleras 

 pas.' " 



Giving due credit to the house- sparrow for all his 

 accomplishments, I fear he can speak the French 

 language only in fable. JoH^^ Michels. 



New York, bee. 10. 



The temperature of the moon. 



Now that the temperature of the moon has become 

 a subject of investigation with the aid of recent 

 refinements in the methods of observing very small 

 intensities of heat radiation, it may be well to also 

 look at the matter from another stand point. 



The condition which determines the static mean 

 temperature of the whole mass of the moon is, that 

 its rate of losing heat by radiation from its surface 

 shall be exactly equal to the rate with which it 

 receives and absorbs the heat radiated from the sun, 



