THE ENGLISH SPARROW. ^ „ 
in-.'&i, XXX.. ^• /0 - z " 
Columbia, S. C. 
Editor American Field : — I have read with interest the 
views of your contributors, pro and con, upon the habits of 
the little foreigners who now constitute a large part of the 
population of the cities and towns In the United States ; I 
refer to the English sparrow. He has his accusers and his 
defenders, the former, however, being largely in the ma- 
jority, and my sympathies ever being with bhe undermost 
dog in the fight, I shall array myself among the latter. 
** For you always see, if it be a free fight 
(Which it very often is), this is so, 
That every other dog who joins in the row 
Will pitch into the one below.” 
He is condemned as pugnacious; although we have a 
variety of birds here, both song and otherwise, I have never 
seen him in combat save with his own kind, and then he 
has shown game worthy of his native shores. These dis- 
putes are comme il faut , or how else could they preserve the 
laws necessary to a good society ? I cannot confute the 
charge of his being predaceous upon my own knowledge, 
but I wish the warlike spirit complained of could be di- 
rected to the banishment, or extinction, of the most annoy- 
ing and predaceous rascal In this country, i. <?., the blue jay. 
This pilferer will sleep in your trees, eat with your poultry, 
quench its thirst from the old oaken bucket (good enough 
for a king) ; and then return your hospitality by robbing 
your nests, or you of the luxury of a matutinal nap, by 
rending your ears with their harsh demoniacal shrieks, while 
perched upon a bough immediately under your window, 
nodding and screaming at you in derision because the city 
ordinance claiming $5 a shot, makes it too expensive to 
bring to bear your .22 Stevens, or .32 Winchester. When a 
boy the negroes used to tell me, with all gravity, that the 
jay bird paid a visit to Hades every Friday, and I am very 
much inclined to believe there is ground for the charge. 
Pardon the digression and I will now legitimately address 
myself to the one count in the Indictment, on which I ex- 
pect to clear the little stranger, viz : that he is non-in- 
sectivorous. 
While reading upon the back porch of my office one 
evening, my attention was drawn to the movements of an 
English sparrow, flitting over a cabbage bed; the cabbage 
leaves were riddled by worms, their ravages this season be- 
ing unusually severe ; I watched, closely sanguine of seeing 
what was developed. The little fellow extracted a worm 
from a stalk, flew to the top of the next building, and, on 
the tin roof, swallowed it piecemeal ; something frightened 
him away, and, whether he gave the information or not, in 
ten minutes a dozen were at work on that cabbage bed and 
several worms were hoisted to the roof of the same build- 
ing, but I observed that none were eaten on the ground. I 
cannot be in error in this statement, as the time was 6 p. m., 
the distance of the roof of next building, spoken of, about 
twenty -five feet and the sun’s rays glinting upon the bird as 
he flew past me made the bright green worms, an inch long, 
gleam like an emerald. Now I consider this evidence 
wholly adequate in rebuttal, and upon the established rule, 
Falsus in uno, etc ., I s hall expe ct an acq uittal. O ne word 
more, and (not like the preacher) “There’s an end on’t, you 
know ;” it behooves us in the city and in the country to 
cherish any instrument for the destruction of insects. A 
distinguished scholar is credited with affirming that after 
the utter extinction of the feathered tribe (referring to in- 
sectivorous birds), insects will destroy this mundane sphere. 
Gongaree. 
. THE ENGLISH SPARROW. , 
Atw.ZuvL. XX i X JT«***J. *’ 
Rochester, N. Y. 
Editor American Field : — The following I sent to the 
Rochester Herald in reply to Professor Fish’s paper en- 
titled “The Danger of the Extinction of Our Native Birds,” 
for there is no sure thing but that I may have some claim 
on him. It is what he says in relation to the English spar- 
row that I take some exceptions to. Now I do not know 
how close an observer of the habits of birds Professor Fish 
is, or but what he has written may have been from his own 
personal observation, but this much I will say, that in my 
opinion nine-tenths of the writers against the English spar- 
row, and many other things as well, base their statements 
on hearsay ; what they have learned from books and what 
they suspect somebody elss would have said had they been 
going to write on the same subject; and the consequence is 
that they writ9 something which is in the main quoted or 
borrowed from somebody else, and of which they have no 
personal knowledge. The prejudice has grown so strong 
against the English sparrow that it has got to be almost as 
much as a man’s life is worth to say anything in his favor ; 
but what I shall say here I have witnessed time and again, 
and, as my intimate friends know, I don’t believe much 
that I don’t see. In regard to the sparrows driving away 
the song birds, he has been painted by his enemies much 
worse than he really is, and I do not believe it. If Pro 
fessor Fish or any one else who believes as he does will 
spend a day with me in my yard in the Summer I will guar- 
antee that I will show him that the English sparrow 
does not drive away other birds, and that he lives mostly on 
insects. I will sho v him martins and sparrows living in the 
same house. I have a basin in my yard that I keep filled 
with water for the birds. It is not an uncommon thing to 
see six or eight sparrows drinking out of the same pan at 
the same time, and if a robin, cat-bird or oriole comes to 
drink, the sparrows leave until the last comers get through; 
then the sparrows come back and finish. I have wrens’ and 
sparrows’ nests in my yard ; they are quite close together 
and if the sparrow lights near the wren’s nest the wren goes 
for him and Mr. Sparrow gets away as fast as he can. The 
most fighting the sparrows do is among themselves, and I 
have seen them do this to the death of one or the other, but 
I have yet to see them kill or even get the best of other 
birds. 
If the robins are really more scarce than formerly it must 
be borne in mind that great numbers of them are killed in 
the Fall of the year on their way South, where they are 
sold in the markets, and the number killed in the North by 
the growers of small fruits is not inconsiderable. 
We are all agreed that thousands of birds have been and 
are killed annually for millinery purposes, and it is not the 
fault of the English sparrow that they fail to return. The 
sparrow is not so handsome as most other birds, but he is 
useful and better than none at all, and his salvation appears 
to be in that nature has not adorned him with bright feath- 
ers. If he had been thus adorned praise of his useful qual- 
ities would have been sounded by those who now seek his 
life. The cats are getting scarce in this country and I think 
the sparrows had as much to do with it as the sparrow had 
to do with driving away the song bird. 
I am a great lover of all the birds and want to see them 
properly protected, the sparrows Included. I know he is 
too useful a member of the feathered creation to be ex- 
terminated. Seth Green. 
