THE NATURALISTS’ COMPANION. 
145 
'rhe English Sparrow has not made 
its ai)i:earan(:e here as yet, though at 
Ottumwa, only a hundred miles east, 
the cdtizens have come to regard the lit¬ 
tle tyrant as a nuisance. It has increas¬ 
ed thereat the usual astonishing rate—has 
taken complete possession of the town 
within the past ten years. 
The Agassiz Association. 
r,Y ‘‘NATURALIST,” WASHINGTON, IND. 
Very often we receive letters from 
p/ersons about to joint the society, re¬ 
questing information, and asking what 
benefit it will be to join. We give the 
information, and invariably reply, “If 
you desire to increase your knowledge of 
the sciences ; if you wish to become ac¬ 
quainted with the many objects with 
which you are surrounded ; if you wish, 
in truth, to become a pupil of old Nature 
you must study, and you will obtain in¬ 
creased facilities for studying by joining 
the Association.” But study does not 
necessarily mean labor, lor you can get 
much am usement from your study. The 
best text-book is everywhere open to 
you, it is the book of Nature. You may 
make collections of your own insects, 
minerals, jilants and shells; and by ex¬ 
changing these with other members, get 
specimens from almost every State in 
the Union, as well as many foreign 
countries. You may make your studies 
by investigating the habits and means 
of jirevention or destruction of insects 
injurious to vegetation. You may es¬ 
tablish experimental stations for deter¬ 
mining to what extent plants from other 
countries may be cultivated in the Unit¬ 
ed States. If you should'enter into this 
work with the right spiiit, the Depart¬ 
ment of Agricultuie would furnish you 
seeds and plants. Turn your studies in 
•a practical direction, and you will be 
aided by persons in all paits of the 
country. Thus will you make the 
Association a practical success. 
He Expresses Our Idea Exactly. 
The following sketch which we clip 
from the April number of Tidings from 
Nature expresses our sentiments exactly 
in regard to certain jicrsons who “col¬ 
lect for the advancement (?) of science. 
Cleveland, O., March 13 . 
I saw in the February number of the 
Ornithologist and Oologist, that Mr. 
Hairy G. Parker had visited Chester 
Island and found long-billed marsh wrens 
so abundant that he secured one hun¬ 
dred sets of their eggs in a single da}^ 
What an infinite amount of good that 
hundred sets will do to science ! And 
particularly since he probably had 
not more than a few thousand before. 
He found the average number of eggs 
to the set to be six, therefore he secured 
six hundred eggs that day. It almost 
seems as though science might compute 
the average size, color, etc., from the 
eggs he already had. However, as these 
eggs are worth about ten cents each, Mr. 
P. made sixty dollars by destroying six 
hundred eggs, or birds, for each egg 
represents a bird, perhaps he thinks 
himself excuseable. In the same num¬ 
ber there appeared another article by 
Mr. Parker, in which he tells of secur¬ 
ing thirty-six sets of Chat’s eggs (scteria 
viVENs) in one day. I will not say 
what I think of Mr. P., but somehow it 
reminds me of a paragraph on page sev¬ 
enty-seven of Davie’s Egg Check List, 
first edition, referring to a certain class 
of collectors; something about their re¬ 
lationship to the Snidie, though I think 
that rather too mild for some cases. 
S. P. Baldwin. 
