29 
limited to a brief season, and might be prevented here, as at home, if 
worth while, by a little cheap netting over the choicer kinds. The 
proceedings of the French commission on the subject were some 
years ago brought under his notice by Mr. Edward Wilson, and that 
gentleman suggested that he should do what was done with such ex¬ 
cellent results by the French commission, viz., to have several birds 
killed, and the contents of their stomachs exposed, so that the public 
might examine them and satisfy themselves, by positive proof, as to 
what they fed upon. From the investigations and dissections which 
had taken place on the subject, he had no hesitation in saying that 
the injury done by either one or other of these birds was insignificant, 
and entirely unworthy of notice. There was no doubt that a great 
proportion of the injury done to the fruit was done not by the 
sparrows, but by native Australian birds frugivorous in their habits. 
i\n esteemed member of this Society, Colonel Champ, had tested this 
by watching the birds ; but the fact seemed to be overlooked by 
those who spoke of the sparrows. He did not hesitate to affirm 
that the visits of the graminivorous birds to fruit-bearing plants were 
almost exclusively for the purpose of finding grubs for their young. 
Mr. Selwyn mentioned a caso in which a gentleman who had 
blamed the sparrows found, upon careful examination, that the injury 
done to his fruit was caused by the native “ ring-eyes.” 
The 'Rev. G. Mackie said he had proclaimed war against the 
sparrows, but at the same time he esteemed very highly the work of 
this noble Society. His experience was totally the reverse of Pro¬ 
fessor M‘Coy’s. He had watched the sparrows. He happened to 
have an acre and a half of ground, orchard and shrubbery, around 
the new church at South Yarra. In the beginning of the season the 
church, being a Gothic one, attracted the sparrows, and they found 
it an exceedingly comfortable homo. Ho first found that all tho 
cherries were pierced. Ho had taken the precaution of personally 
watching them, and he had seen as many as 250 of these imported 
sparrows at the cherries. Out of about 1501b. weight of cherries which 
were expected they only got Gib. However, forgetting the cherries, 
he thought nothing more of the matter until the apricots came, 
and theifthey had only about two or three dozen from trees that had 
about 150. Then he found his vines covered with a green grub, and he 
made it his business to see whether master sparrow touched them. 
He did nothing of the kind. He took what was much better. 
Then out of some dozen plum trees, with perhaps 300 plums upon 
them, they did not get six pounds weight over the whole. He had 
