xliv 
INTRODUCTION. 
duction of the so-called useful and ornamental birds from other parts of the world. The conditions of 
existence are very favourable to the establishment and increase of many of the imported forms, and, 
as a consequence, the indigenous species are being displaced and supplanted by them to a very alarm- 
ing degree. The colony of New Zealand, like every other new country, has been, from time to time, 
possessed as it were by a rage for acclimatization ; and the zeal for the introduction of novelties has 
not always been tempered by the judgment which comes of experience. The Author must himself 
plead guilty to having been accessory to the importation of the House-Sparrow in 1865, having in 
that year, on behalf of the Wanganui Acclimatization Society, advertised in the London newspapers 
offering a reward of £100 for 100 pairs of House-Sparrows delivered alive in the colony. The adver- 
tisement and the importation alike succeeded ; and at the present day myriads of these birds in all 
parts of the country attest the fact, and in the grain-season especially they elicit even from their 
strongest partisans the admission that they are not an “ unmixed blessing.” While, however, 
admitting myself that the “ Sparrow nuisance ” does exist in rather an aggravated form, I do claim 
on behalf of this bird full credit for its strictly insectivorous habits at a certain season of the year, 
and I have never lost an opportunity, in spite of the odium, of putting in a plea for the poor 
persecuted Passer domesticus *. 
* As with all questions of this kind, there is much to be said for and against the Sparrow, and numerous experiments have 
been made by friends and foes for the purpose of demonstrating the actual truth of the case. The following newspaper record 
contains the result of one of these experiments, and, so far as my observation goes, the weight of evidence is invariably in favour 
of the bird : — “ A hundred and eighteen Sparrows have been offered upon the altars of science. As was the case with the Pagan 
sacrifices, their entrails have been carefully inspected, in order to furnish guidance to the inquirers. But it has not been in 
search of the cabalistic information to be derived from quaint contortion, or the credited, though impossible, absence of the heart, 
or some other vital organ, that the sacrificial knife has been bared. The contents of the stomachs of the victims have been 
examined, tabulated, recorded. Three culprits alone, out of this hecatomb of the favourites of Cytherea, were proved, by the 
unsparing search, guilty of having lived for the past four-and-twenty hours upon grain. In fact, there were three thieves out of 
the 118; all the other victims had worked, more or less, for their living. Beetles, and grubs, and flies, and larvae of all 
obnoxious kinds had been their diet. In 75 of the birds, infants of all ages, from the callow fledgling to the little Pecksy and 
Flapsy that could just twitter along the ground, hardly any but insect remains were detected. What would the starved and 
industrious pioneers who have reared their wonderful temple and city by the Great Salt Lake have given for the aid of an 
army of English Sparrows against that greater and more formidable host of grasshoppers which thrice all but annihilated the 
settlement ? ” 
To give the other side of the argument, and to show that the prejudice against the Sparrow and its consequent punishment 
is not confined to New Zealand, I may quote the following newspaper account of its status in Australia : — “ Home once owed its 
salvation to a Goose, but it has been reserved for the Sparrow in these degenerate modem days to threaten a flourishing young 
State with serious loss, if not, as the farmers assert, absolute ruin. Babbits have for some years played an important part in 
directing legislation in some of the Australasian Colonies, and now in South Australia the Sparrow is becoming a power in the 
land, and calls for all the machinery of special Acts of Parliament to keep it within bounds. The bird, which only a few years 
ago such efforts were made to acclimatize in Australia, and whose first arrival was hailed with greater enthusiasm than would 
now be displayed on the landing of a Bend Or, a Duchess, or a prize merino, is now doomed to extermination— if that can 
possibly be achieved. So rapidly have tho few pairs which were introduced a few years ago multiplied under the congenial skies 
and amid the luxuriant vegetation of the Australian Colonies, where there are few or none of the checks on their increase which 
exist in the Old Country, that the agriculturists complain of the serious injury done by them to their wheat and fruit crops, 
and have called upon the Government to devise some means of ensuring their destruction Its work is done on a scale 
disheartening to the cultivator, and under conditions he cannot control, for tho seed is taken out of the ground, the fruit-bud off 
the tree, the sprouting vegetable as fast as it grows, and the fruit ere it is ripe, and therefore before it can be housed and saved. 
Neither apricots, cherries, figs, apples, grapes, peaches, plums, pears, nectarines, loquats, olives, wheat, barley, peas, cabbages, 
cauliflowers, or seeds or fruits of any kind, are spared by its omnivorous bill ; and all means of defence tried against its 
depredations, whether scarecrows, traps, netting, shooting, or poisoning, are declared to be insufficient to cope with the enemy. 
It remains to be seen whether the reward offered by the Government for the heads and eggs of these destructive little birds will 
result in any diminution in their numbers.” 
