st birds so that he has dared to make
of man his near neighbor when other birds consider him their worst
enemy. I love him for it. When I am in the midst of a big city with
its cliffs of offices and its gorges of paved streets, it is to me a
cheer and a delight to see this happy little fellow who has adapted
himself to circumstances against which no other bird, excepting the
pigeon, can cope. I confess that it would be with regret that I should
see him disappear from the landscape. I have missed a long line of
spring peas through his ravages, and he has objectionably decorated
many places about my own home. But I have yet the first violent hand
to lay upon the sparrow, and I doubt whether my hand is ever to be
reddened with his blood.

I am going to ask bird-men to forgive me if I say that I believe,
although I speak only from general impression, and not from careful
research, that the sparrow within the past eight years has reached his
equilibrium in the neighborhood of Philadelphia and is growing no more
abundant. Meanwhile another and very desirable state of affairs is
arising. Bird love and bird protection are so active in this
neighborhood that there is growing to be a new race of birds who lack
the fear of man their ancestors justly had. Under these conditions the
wild birds, which for a while we believed to have been completely
driven out by the sparrow, are rapidly returning to our villages and
towns, and we have many more robins and catbirds, wrens and flickers
than we had ten years ago. We have seen the worst of the English
sparrow; he has now found his equilibrium.

CHAPTER IV

ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL

Among the standard books of the classical curriculum in the
denominational college of thirty years ago was a volume which I
suppose has practically disappeared from such courses. It delighted
many of its students for a reason entirely different from that which
the author meant should be its taking feature. It was Paley's "Natural
Theology." The author started with a story of a watch found by a
savage. This child of nature was supposed to examine its mechanism and
to infer that the watch was made for a definite purpose. As I
remember, he was even supposed to discover that its purpose was to
mark time. It was at least to become clear to his savage mind that
this was no chance object, but was the definite product of a designing
mind. Having brought this hypothetical savage to these conclusions,