It is already too late to think of ever destroying the sparrow. We can only palliate by thinning the flocks; the legislature of New York has repealed the law protecting them, but this is not enough. Owing to their phenomenal fecundity, the state should give a bounty of one cent a head, and then our boys would attend to them. I once drew and sent to Albany a bill that passed the house, but failed in the senate, from fear that the cost would be too great. The amount of bounty in the original bill as I drew it, was one cent per head, but through some influence the bounty was doubled, and the measure thus defeated. It was provided that one hundred scalps must be accumulated before payment could be demanded of the state. This provision was made to prevent the measure costing the state any great amount of money, for the reason that few boys would accumulate so many birds ; but it would nevertheless set them at work 'and call attention to the necessity of thinning the great flocks. It was indeed at one time reported that the measure had passed, and there was great preparation for trapping the birds among the boys, but their ardor was soon dampened by the failure of this bill in the senate. The statute now gives a bounty for panthers and other wild beasts.

There were some idle apprehensions about boys mistaking other birds, and killing them for sparrows, but this was an insinuation touching the intelligence of our boys that has no foundation in fact. Until 1887 I could not understand why the fruit growers and gardeners about our eastern cities talked so much about the sparrows, but when I was forced to stand, shot gun in hand, for several weeks over my fruit and garden crops to save them from destruction by the many thousands of sparrows that had been bred in the city of Watertown, I realized all about it. I am glad to concede that the bird has some merits that should not be overlooked. Its presence in winter when our native species of birds have all migrated, is a daily delight to me ; its pugnacity is amusing, but I must confess I cannot enjoy its music, for it consists of a series of saw-filing notes, uttered and reiterated year after year without variation, or sign of developing into genuine bird music. I freely concede that the sparrows to a limited extent are insectivorous during the breeding season, but their insectivorous habits and instincts here have always appeared to me to be more or less a species of dawdling, I have watched them very carefully for years, and once in a while I see them catching and playing with insects, much as a kitten plays with a mouse, idly and for pastime only.

There was once a flock of them in my cabbage patch, having great sport with the flea beetle ; but I think the beetles made the sparrows sick, for I have not seen the flock since, but the beetles remained. - D. S. Marvin.