THE SPARROW WAR. 851 
ment for adaptation to the suburbs or 
country residence. Here the Pyrgita is 
a nuisance rather than an aid or pleasure 
toman. It becomes low and vulgar when 
brought into contrast with the form, plum- 
age, and song of our own birds; and he 
who comes out early in the softness of 
some bright June morning for a stroll 
over his lawn and a tour of his garden, 
may be well acquitted of injustice if he 
shall be found with anger in his heart and 
wrath in his eye for the hundreds or thou- 
sands of little brown sparrows that ca- 
rouse, like so many rowdy boys, through 
his cherry-trees, and wantonly shake the 
dew from his currants into their mischiev- 
ous beaks. 
The intense vitality and self-assurance 
of the house-sparrow manifests itself, how- 
ever, to great advantage during the win- 
ters that clog our city streets with ice and 
snow, and by its real philosophy under 
difficulties it must cheer many a discour- 
aged man or woman to a fresh effort and 
a lighter heart. It is the only bird not 
domesticated that will winter and sum- 
mer alike with us in our Northern cities 
and villages, and, so far as the writer has 
ever been able to observe, the Pyrgita has 
never used force to drive other birds from 
its local habitation; but it is true, how- 
ever, that most of our songsters are not 
as noisy or as gregarious during the mat- 
ing season as is the house-sparrow, and 
therefore when the former are surround- 
ed by the clatter of the boisterous broods 
of the latter, many of them naturally re- 
tire to more peaceful limits—to the sub- 
urbs, and to the country—where they are 
not annoyed by the incessant gossip and 
bustle of their imported brethren. Dur- 
ing the last fifteen years the writer has 
resided for a great portion of the time in 
the Smithsonian Building, that stands sur- 
rounded by a fifty-acre park of lawn, for- 
estry, and shrubs, at Washington. Hecan 
recall the earlier days when the indige- 
nous birds were certainly much more nu- 
merous there than they now are, and when 
their peculiarly sweet songs of May and 
June delightfully opened and closed the 
lovely days of that season of the year. 
The sparrow came a few years ago, and 
to-day its monotonous chirp is the pre- 
dominant sound early and late throughout 
the park and the city, though there are a 
fair number of our song-sparrows, robins, 
warblers, and orioles still scattered as they 
nest here and there within the grounds ; 
but when they do stay, the incessant harsh 
chirping of their English cousin seems to 
rob them of almost all desire to sing them- 
selves, so that we are only treated now to 
occasional outbursts of their own charm- 
ing melody. 
The sparrow is emphatically a bird of 
business and nothing else. It has no ear 
for music, no time for art—no apprecia- 
tion of the one or the other, but it at- 
tends solely and strictly to business, and 
the great absorbing theme of its energetic 
life is how to successfully rear three or 
four broods of its kind every year. The 
fact that it pays such devoted, diligent at- 
tention to this subject is that which ren- 
ders it of such real, substantial service to 
the better preservation and protection of 
our city shade trees. It is very common- 
ly held that the sparrow does not destroy 
insects by seeking these pests as food, but 
that it preys upon street sweepings and 
refuse from dwellings. In this connec- — 
tion the incorrectness of that point may 
be made entirely clear by calling atten- 
tion to the probable truth of this fact: 
not one of the young sparrows, from the 
day they are hatched until they are fully 
fledged, can subsist upon any food except 
the larve of insects and certain insects 
themselves. Therefore each pair of spar- 
rows, in the labor of raising three or four 
distinct broods of their young during the 
spring and summer, must seek for and 
destroy an enormous aggregate of insect 
and worm life by thus rearing and feed- 
ing their hearty, voracious nurslings, be- 
cause the hunger of the nestlings seems 
never to be assuaged, while the efforts of 
the parents to satisfy it do not cease from 
early dawn until late in the evening. In- 
deed, so difficult do the old birds find the 
task of satisfying the craving appetites of 
their young with this dainty fare that 
they themselves are frequently compelled 
to feedin turn upon the coarser and more 
abundant food which they find in the 
streets, and when they have been seen 
feeding in this way by thoughtless people, 
they have been and they are charged with 
neglect of their proper duty—the destruc- 
tion of insect life. 
In this devotion to their young from 
early in May until the end of September, 
as their swift rotating broods appear, the 
sparrows in our cities certainly render 
efficient and valuable service, and though 
they do crowd out from our parks and 
squares many of our familiar songsters, 
