with this family industry? What can a bluebird offer that will
approach such chances of a worthy successor when his work shall be
finished?

These, then, are the most important points in which the English
sparrow has varied from his sparrow cousins and made of himself the
most successful town dweller in the bird world. He has become clannish
and gained the advantages of cooeperation. He has used man's highways
and cars by means of which to expand his area. He has cultivated the
presence of man and thus gained protection from his enemies, food from
man's waste, and nesting sites on man's house. He has assumed a varied
diet. The male has become handsome. He has given up migrating, and
thus secured the best nesting sites. He has learned to produce many
offspring. With all his versatility, why should he not succeed?

Thrown into competition with our native birds, he easily beats them
on their own ground. He survives against the competition of birds
which seem to us more estimable in every way. The very fact that he
survives proclaims his superiority over them, and shows that our
criterion is not the one by which nature judges. We like the birds
which serve our purpose. We admire the brilliant plumage of the jay,
cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush,
and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink,
the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of
the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the
insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can
only understand the value of the bird to nature when he is valuable to
us. So, because the English sparrow does little that is to our
advantage and much that is to our annoyance, he is in our estimation a
reprobate and an unending nuisance.

All sensible bird-men must clearly acknowledge that he is a very
undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize
the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This
pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked
in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am
taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the
foregoing account, can scarcely have missed the undercurrent of my
affection for the little rascal. He is a thorough optimist; he is
absolutely persistent; no hardship seems to dampen his ardor. His
heart is valiant above that of mo