586 
able punishment for their hasty meas- 
ures.” 
Frederick the Great of Prussia, as is 
shown in these same documents, also 
waged war in his day against the spar- 
row, because he did not respect his fa- 
vorite fruit, the cherry. The sparrow, 
of course, yielded to the conqueror of 
Austria, and disappeared from Prussia. 
But, at the end of two years, not only 
were there no cherries in all Prussia, 
but also hardly any other kind of fruit. 
The caterpillars destroyed all. And 
this great king, conqueror in so many 
battle-fields, was glad to sign an hum- 
ble treaty of peace, and to surrender 
up a fair proportion of his cherries to 
the sparrow, once more restored to the 
country and to royal favor. 
More than this, it is fully shown from 
the investigations of M. Florent-Pre- 
vost, that, according to circumstances, 
insects form from at the least one half 
to by far the largest proportion of the 
daily food of the sparrow. It is exclu- 
sively with insects that it nourishes its 
greedy brood, and this witness cites one 
very remarkable proof of the fact. In 
Paris, where the abundance of the 
waste food of man is so great that the 
sparrows need hardly seek any other 
food, a pair of these birds having built 
their nest on a terrace in the Rue Vi- 
vienne, the wing-coverts of May-beetles 
which had been rejected from the nest 
were collected, and found to number 
fourteen hundred, showing that at least 
seven hundred of these destructive in- 
sects had been consumed by one family 
in raising a single brood. 
Thus it appears that the concurrent 
testimony of English naturalists, as well 
as of French savans who have carefully 
examined the subject, is conclusive in 
favor of the sparrows, demonstrating by 
indisputable evidence that the benefits 
they confer far more than compensate 
for the harm they may do. 
That the sparrow is very fond of the 
ripening grain, and that, in the vicin- 
ity of large towns, it is occasionally 
destructive of that, as well as of seeds 
and small fruit, cannot be denied. But 
its depredations are limited both as to 
The European House-Sparrow. 
[May, 
time and place, and are neither so ex- 
tensive nor so wide-spread as many sup- 
pose. Sparrows chiefly frequent cities 
and large towns, and are comparatively 
rare in rural districts where grain is 
principally raised, and where the mis- 
chief they may do can bear no propor- 
tion to that which they prevent. Of 
this the best evidence we could seek is 
found in the simple fact already cited, 
that in France, as well as in other coun- 
tries, after full investigations into its 
merits and its alleged demerits, the 
sparrow is no longer persecuted and 
sought out for destruction as a worth- 
less marauder, but is protected by strin- 
gent laws as a public benefactor. 
In this country the sparrow has been 
so recently tntroduced that it may seem 
premature to speak with positive cer- 
tainty as to what its future here may 
develop of good or ill. But any one 
who knows the condition to which the 
trees in the public squares and parks 
of New York and more southern 
cities were reduced each successive 
summer by the measure-worms, must 
admit that the sparrows brought in- 
to our commercial emporium by a few 
public-spirited gentlemen have already 
done wonders. Only a few years since, 
all the trees in these parks, except the 
ailantus, became early in summer an 
unsightly collection of desolated branch- 
es, made yet more disgusting by the 
repulsive-looking worms that dangled 
from them, and caught upon the clothes 
of the incautious. Children could not 
sport with comfort under the trees, 
and the passer-by avoided them. 
Many cut down the shade-trees near 
their dwellings as the only means of 
escaping from these pests. The evil 
seemed not only incurable, but to be 
on the increase in all our maritime 
cities, from Boston to Washington. 
The introduction of the house-sparrow 
has already completely arrested this 
plague in New York and the neighbor- 
ing cities of Brooklyn, Jersey City, Eliz- 
abeth, and Newark. Never was any 
mission more promptly or more thor- 
oughly fulfilled. The sparrows at once 
encountered the enemy, and in two 
