THE SPARROWS 
197 
with me to the country roads, and listen for three 
minutes to the delicious melody that pours from 
the quivering throat of a Song-Sparrow . 1 When 
he feels well, he will perch on the top of a hedge, 
secure a good grip on a comfortable twig, point 
his beak skyward at an angle of sixty degrees, 
and sing as if trying to burst his little throat. 
Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright justly calls him “the 
darling among the song-birds,” and “the most 
constant singer among our northern birds. ’ In 
some localities, at least, they sing all summer long. 
In Iowa I have heard them a thousand times, 
bravely piping and trilling in the sweltering 
heat of July and August, when other birds were 
silent, and have been moved to wonder at the 
amount of energy stored up in their little bodies. 
I think the best way to identify this bird is by 
its singing. Pick out the sparrow in gray and 
brown which sings to surpass all others, and it 
will be a Song-Sparrow. Its home is the eastern 
half of North America, from northern Manitoba 
to Mexico. West of the Rocky Mountains it 
becomes the Mountain Song-Sparrow. In the 
southwestern deserts it grows pale, — to match 
its environment, — and becomes the Desert 
Song-Sparrow. There are thirteen species of 
the Song-Sparrow genus, — or at least that num- 
ber have been described, and Alaska is yet to be 
heard from. 
The White-Throated Sparrow 2 is the spe- 
cies which comes next in general attractive- 
ness. It is a very pert and pretty bird — for a 
sparrow, and its oddly marked head is easily 
identified. It wears a white goatee and a black 
cap, and on the latter is laid a broad arrow, in 
white. A white line comes down along the cen- 
tre line of the head, and another comes forward 
over each eye, until the three come together at 
the base of the upper mandible. The song of 
this bird is pleasing, and nearly every self-re- 
specting ornithologist translates it into English 
to suit his or her fancy; but, to tell the truth, 
the White-Throat never will win a prize as a 
great singer. 
The English Sparrow . 3 — Let me dip my pen 
in blu3 vitriol; for my temperature rises at the 
thought of writing the name. Daily we see 
the unclean little wretches grubbing in the filth 
1 Mel-o-spi'za fas-ci-a'ta. Length, 6t inches. 
2 Zo-no-tri’ chi-a al-bi-col'lis. Length, 61 inches. 
3 Pas'ser do-mes'ti-cus. Length, about 6 inches. 
and microbes of the street, where no American 
bird will humble itself to feed. After twenty 
years of acquaintance, I am obliged to say that 
I never saw one catch a worm, a caterpillar, or 
an insect of any kind. When the elm-trees are 
loaded with tent caterpillars, an English Spar- 
row will let them crawl all over him, and not 
kill one. Instead of ranging out into the open 
fields and hunting for clean weed-seeds, this 
bird revels in the foulest dirt of the street. It 
does, however, manage to eat the seeds of the 
WHITE-THROATED SPARROW. 
dandelion, when the heads are filling, in April 
and May. 
The English Sparrow is not beautiful, either 
in form or plumage, and it cannot sing a note. 
Its tastes are low and vulgar. It is quarrelsome, 
and crowds out many other species of small 
perching-birds. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, when 
Mr. Frank Bond killed all the English Sparrows, 
and kept them killed, other perching-birds flocked 
into the city in great numbers, and many spe- 
cies bred there. The more persistently these 
