36 



SCIEXCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 153 



their place. Well, we exterminated these sparrows, 

 and our birds came back. C. I. 



Oregon. Mo., Jan. 1. 



The discussion of the merits of the English sparrow, 

 as shown in the contributions to Science, indicates a 

 wide difference of opinion. Some of the conclusions 

 reached by your contributors are unwarranted by 

 any facts based on a thorough knowledge of the 

 bird's habits as known in this country. It is very 

 convenient to join in the cry of enemy, thief, pest, 

 and like epithets ; but that is not a scientific method 

 of reaching conclusions. We want a bill of par- 

 ticulars, more facts and less crusade against these 

 ' assisted emigrants.' 



They are charged with driving out other birds 

 from our city. My home and place of observation 

 being within twenty-five miles of New York City, I 

 can speak from careful observation that this charge 

 has but little value in this locality. 



Very few birds care to dwell in cities, except in 

 the suburbs. It is neither congenial to their taste 

 nor adapted to their requirements, while the English 

 sparrow is essentially a native of a city, finding 

 comfortable shelter and abundant food wherever 

 partially digested grain may be found, in stables or 

 along the highways travelled by horses. Excepting 

 in the spring and summer months, this waste ma- 

 terial is the almost exclusive food of this bird. 

 Now we will consider the country life of this spar- 

 row. 



They are charged with destroying our crops. 

 Have the farmers of this country made this com- 

 plaint, or must we echo the tirade from abroad ? As 

 a farmer, my observation is, that the amount of 

 wheat this bird appropriates during the few days of 

 harvesting is too insignificant for notice. I know of 

 no other grain that is molested in the slightest degree. 

 That they are large destroyers of insects during the 

 summer months, every observer knows. The army- 

 worm finds in the English sparrow one of its most 

 vigilant enemies. As to the garden fruits, we find 

 that it molests none, and kindly leaves all the cher- 

 ries to the robins and cat-birds. I have many grape- 

 vines trained against my buildings, with an abun- 

 dance of sparrows roosting amid the clusters of 

 grapes, and have wondered at the sparrow's poor 

 judgment in not tasting a single bunch. Such is my 

 observation of this bird : social in its habits, appar- 

 ently of the most happy disposition, but at times 

 pugnacious with his relatives, which encounters are 

 never fatal in their consequences. Certainly it is no 

 concern of ours ; for they seem to possess, in a 

 remarkable degree, the spirit of forgiveness, and 

 live, on the whole, in great social harmony. We 

 rightly know them as pest when they soil our piazzas 

 and deface our window-casings. J. D. Hicks. 



Old Westbury, N.Y. 



Equality in ability of the young of the human 

 species. 



'• We have a pernicious habit in this country of 

 supposing, that ... all men . . . are born equal as 

 to their abilities." "We have a different theory in 

 regard to horses." 



" It would, perhaps, be a good plan, if the young of 

 the human species were divided into two groups at 

 an early age, — one large, and one small ; one com- 

 posed of those of whom nothing more than plain 



living is expected, and the other composed of the 

 race - horses, of those whose ancestors, or whose 

 chance endowments, give reason to hope that they 

 may give some aid to learning or to culture. Any 

 one whose destiny is to do difficult thinking in after- 

 life should . . . dwell long among the geometrical 

 concepts, should become thoroughly imbued with the 

 bare and rigid form of reasoning, and should have 

 the results as familiar as his mother-tongue." 



A criticism of a recent book on geometry, in 

 Science supplement of Jan. 1, gives occasion to the 

 critic to give the above views of a topic much wider 

 than that of geometry. He would differentiate the 

 human species into two groups, — the race-horses and 

 dray-horses, — and train them accordingly, and the 

 basis of the differentiation would be ' ancestry,' or 

 ' chance endowments.' Suppose this had been done in 

 the past, what chance is there that Watt, Stephenson, 

 or Ericsson would have become known as engineers ; 

 Franklin. Faraday, or Edison as electricians ; Napo- 

 leon or Grant as soldiers ; Lincoln or Garfield as 

 statesmen ; Livingston as an explorer ; Carlyle as a 

 writer ? Is it not notorious that most great men 

 have not been descended from distinguished ances- 

 tors, and that in most cases their chance endow- 

 ments have not been discovered, either by them- 

 selves or by their friends, until the age of manhood ? 

 The habit in this country, of supposing all men born 

 equal as to their abilities, has had ample justification 

 in the past, and may have in the future. Among 

 the poorest families in the farthest west there are 

 many Grants, Lincolns. or Garfields ; among callow- 

 chandlers' clerks there are Franklins ; among Scot- 

 tish farmers there are Carlyles ; the poorest weavers 

 may produce another Livingston ; and some obscure 

 Corsican may be another Napoleon. We of the 

 American branch of the Anglo-Saxon race have all 

 a good ancestry. Six generations back, each of us 

 had thirty-two male ancestors, at least one of whom 

 must have been distinguished as a king, a statesman, 

 a general, a thinker, or possibly as a 'gentlemanly 

 scoundrel,' or freebooter ; and all American babies 

 are born with some 'chance endowment,' which, if 

 given the proper environment, will develop into 

 ability. But, alas ! the chances are that the grow- 

 ing child will not be given the proper environment. 

 He may have the ancestral traits or the chance 

 endowments which would lead him to be a great 

 soldier, an artist, an engineer, or a farmer ; and he 

 will be sent to school, where all these traits or en- 

 dowments will be repressed, and his education will 

 tend to make him a storekeeper or a politician ; or he 

 may not be sent to school at all, and ancestral 

 poverty may be the cause of his remaining a coal- 

 miner or a ' farmer's hand ' all his life, and Gray's 

 ' Elegy ' may be used as his epitaph. 



Whether the young of the human species will de- 

 velop into race-horses or dray-horses is not generally 

 determinable by ancestry or by ' chance endowment,' 

 but rather by environment during youth and early 

 manhood. The youth has the ancestry of both dray- 

 horse and race-horse combined, and the 'chance en- 

 dowments' are numerous enough to include some of the 

 qualities of both. Better assume that the young are 

 born equal in ability, and in their early training, be- 

 ginning with the kindergarten, give them an equal 

 chance to develop into mechanics, storekeepers, 

 artists, farmers, or lawyers, than to differentiate 

 them into the classes of race-horses and dray horses 

 at the beginning. W. K. 



