30 THE RELATION OF SPAKBOW8 TO AGRICULTURE. 
pasture; and a pair each of white-throated Bparrows and j uncos in a 
moist Lowland meadow jnsi below the pasture. The Last- mentioned 
birds appeared to come into contact with the cultivated crops of the 
farm less than any of the others, and seemed less naturally placed 
than some scores of other white-throats and j uncos thai nested about 
1,000 feei higher up the mountain. When the nesting season was 
over and all the birds became more gregarious, field and chipping 
sparrows were observed in the pigeon-grass that had overspread the 
vegetable garden near the house; both of these species and vesper 
sparrows along the hayfield fence, with juncosjust beyond the feuce; 
and song sparrows, white-f hroats, and a few white-crowns in 1 he moist 
meadow. The last three species Later (the first week in October) 
entered the vegetable garden. 
In a eonnl of the individuals found within a radius of :> miles from 
the farm as a center, made during the seventy-five days from July is 
to September 20, song sparrows were noted 139 times, chipping spar- 
rows Lis times, field sparrows L13 times, vesper sparrows 7:5 times. 
white-throats 58 times, and juncos 39 times. Care was taken not to 
count the same individual twice in a day. 
The chief interest in these observations is their comparison with 
much more extended and thorough studies pursued on a farm at 
Marshall Hall, Md.. which has been frequently visited during the 
past five or six years. This farm, as lias been mentioned, is situated 
upon the level, alluvial bluff of the Potomac, directly opposite Mount 
Vernon, Va. On the brink of the bluff stand, at intervals along 
several hundred yards of sandy road, a farmhouse, a horse barn, a 
cow barn, and a negro cabin. Mowing land, pasture lots, and fields 
where corn, wheat, and tobacco are grown, extend back from the river 
lor a third of a mile. Out in the arable land is a storage barn. 
Between this barn and the river runs a bushy ditch that courses almost 
parallel to the river for the greater pari of its Length and then turns 
to empty into it by means of a swampy timbered outlet beyond the 
negro cabin. 
On these two farms, so different in feature — one beside a Southern 
river, the other on a slope of a New England mountain — the same 
characteristics are found to mark the habitats of the various spar- 
rows, in summer, song sparrows live in the swampy outlet of the 
ditch, all along the beach of the river, and in a wet blind gully cut 
into the bluff just above the farmhouse, but frequently leave their 
almost a<|iiatie habitat and ascend to the top of the locust-fringed 
bluff in order to forage in the road and about the buildings for kinds 
of food not plentiful along the river shore. Chipping sparrows breed 
aboul all the buildings of the farm, but have never been observed on 
the beach or in the swampy indentations of the shore line. Several 
nest in a pear orchard hundreds of yards distant from any waterway. 
Field sparrows rear their young upon poor, worn-out land of the farm, 
