THE MALIGNED SPARROW.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XL, Issue XL, 1 March 1912, Page 3

THE MALIGNED SPARROW.

Farmers in New Zealand will be surprised to hear that but for the sparrow they would long ago have been forced to give up their holdings. Still, according to Mr Jas. Buckland, a well-known authority, that would have been the case: In a recently address in defence of birds, Mr Auckland is reported as having said : "That formidable imported weed, the variegated Scotch thistle, threatened at one time to overrun the whole of New Zealand. Where it had once fairly eslablished itself it seemed well-nigh impossible to eradicate it; and it was spreading with the speed of scandal. Much time and money was spent in cutting off the plant close to the stumps, but the wind-driven clouds of thistledown, which w/ere planting the seeds far and wide, e-rew yearly denser and more frequent! At length the fields became a thickly packed growth of prickly plants which nothing could face. The sparrows took to eating the seed. In tens of thousands they fed on it, giving it the preference of all other hard food, andthe weed was conquered. To-day, in New Zealand, the sparrow is looked upon as an impudent thief, without a redeeming feature in its character. * No one, of course, can pay what would happen if the sparrow were dismissed from New Zealand, but it is certain as anything in this world can be that the Dominion would be again overrun with caterpillars and thistles. As it is, the good the sparrows do must far outweight the mischief which is laid to their charge. This statement receives the amplest confirmation in the beautiful harvests with which New Zealand is blessed. Never were the sparrows more numerous, never the comnlaints against them more bitter; yet the yield of grain is without precedent. The growling of the New Zealand farmer at the sparrow again justifies Argil's complaint ofthe 'Miserly husbandman,' Miserly, indeed, and blind. Not a grain will he give to the bird which has laboured unceasingly for 11. long month to free the soil from grubs; but whole fields of wheat to the caterpillar. In Australia a plague of grasshoppers periodically visits the paddocks % to devour the crops. But the ruin they would otherwise bring on the farmer is checked by large flocks of glossy ibis, spoonbills, or cranes, and other native birds.

It has been computed by an eminent naturalist that a flock of 200,000 of these saviours will consume in a single day 25 tons of grasshoppers. It is for this reason that the people of the Commonwealth view with such grave apprehension the continued slaughter native birds of for. their loss is rendering the country ever mure prone to the plagues of grasshoppers "