PEE SAUD BON BULL ETN 11 

More About the English Sparrow 
M re than fifty years ago Thomas G. Gentry of Philadelphia 
wrote a life history of this sparrow, in which he states that 
about 1858 sparrows were imported from Germany to Portland, 
Maine, by a misguided individual who hoped that they would be an 
effective check on certain injurious insects that were destroying the sod 
in the city park. In Europe, passer domesticus has not developed into 
the pest that it has become in the United States, being controlled by 
the balance of nature that usually takes care of native birds and animals. 
Here the sparrow, like many other aliens, found conditions very 
much to its liking, and very soon, through the prodigal supply of waste 
grain in railroad yards, increased to enormous numbers, and through 
the means of box cars was distributed all over the United States and 
Canada. 
In the seventies there was a heated controversy over the sparrow 
among ornithologists, and after a thorough investigation the Nuttall 
Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, voted unanimously that its im- 
portation was an extremely unfortunate circumstance. 
A Bird Lover states that the sparrow is a better mother than the robin. 
“The female of the species” is always solicitous for its offspring, and 
the same thing may be said of mice, rats, coyotes and many predacious 
animals. 
The fecundity of the English sparrow is proverbial, and there are 
continuous successions of new broods through the summer. 
The sparrow is highly gregarious. It fights in gangs; has no attrac- 
tive song; its nesting habits are exceedingly uncleanly and its attitude 
to our summer resident and migrating native birds is offensive and 
intolerant. I have seen a male sparrow deliberately destroy robins’ 
eggs, and have watched them heckle and otherwise annoy other birds 
at the bath. 
Surely the writer of Matthew 10-29 never anticipated that some 
time this avian pest would increase to such numbers that it would 
become a menace to native American bird life. 
We have many attractive sparrows, many of whom are among our 
finest singers. Among these are the song, fox, field, tree, white throated, 
white crowned, vesper and others. All of these are valuable as de- 
stroyers of the seeds of noxious weed. 
_ As a result of change sparrows have moved to barnyards and are 
fast driving out the barn swallow, which was once so plentiful in farm 
buildings. The purple martins have a continual fight to hold their 
own in the houses that have been erected for them. 
OrpHEuUS MOYER SCHANTZ, ° 
