50
ON THE PRESENT STATUS OF PASSER
DOMESTICUS IN AMERICA.
With Special Reference to the Western States
and Territories.
By DR. ELLIOTT COUES, U.S.A.
Now that the enormous increase and rapid dispersion of the European house-sparrow in America have resulted in the appearance of this objectionable bird in various portions of the Western States and Territories, it is time to consider what means may be taken to check its westward extension; for the agriculturists of that portion of our country have already enough to do to contend with the grasshopper scourge, without having to guard their crops against a plague only less formidable and imminent. Should the noxious birds become as numerous and as widely diffused in the West as they are already in the thickly settled portions of the United States, they would there prove even more destructive to the crops than they are known to be in the East. For here they still live, for the most part, in cities, towns, and villages, where they derive their subsistence chiefly from street-garbage,
