"Your petitioners would, therefore, most earnestly request that, as the Chief Executive Officer of the city, you direct the immediate reduction and suppression of this pest in such places (instancing the Common and, conditionally, the cemeteries of Boston) as may now be under, or may with this purpose in view be brought under, municipal control."

Under the law of 1890, the Mayor proceeded at once to take such measures as seemed advisable for clearing the Common, Public Garden, and city squares, of the Sparrow pest.

The work was done under the general oversight of the Committee on the English Sparrow, of which Mr. Fletcher Osgood, manager and organizer of the Bird Restorers, was and is the chairman. Five men, with Foreman Kennedy, proceeded to clear English Sparrow nests from the Common, by removing them from orifices in the trees, from openings in the Sanitary Building, and from electric hoods. The nest-boxes, put up years ago by misguided persons to accommodate the English Sparrow were all removed, and the Sanitary Building on the Public Garden was cleared.

In the progress of this work, thousands of small orifices in the trees of the Common (all known to exist) were cleared out and effectively closed with wooden stoppers, and much dead wood, inviting the breeding of the Sparrow, was removed. As a whole, great good in the way of arresting decay and generally improving the trees of the Common was done by Foreman Kennedy and his force, even if we leave out of account the checking of the breeding of the Sparrow. The work began on March 15, and ended April 5. During that period about 5,000 nests and 1,000 eggs were destroyed. No young birds were found. The protest against the work, based mainly on sentimental grounds, which Mr. Angell, of the S. P. C. A., put forth, resulted in two picturesque hearings at the City Hall. An account of these hearings, with some of their informal adjuncts, would certainly entertain and instruct the readers of Bird-Lore were it possible to embody it here.

Let it suffice to say, that the weight of common sense, of real humanity, and of economics, as well as of science in overwhelming measure, was, in the judgment of the best informed, wholly with those who would reduce the Sparrow. The Mayor, however, decided to suspend the work, assigning as a reason the difficulty and expense of continuing it. The committee sent to the Mayor a letter expressing its regret that the work should thus be brought to an untimely close, and fully outlining plans for its continuance. At the present writing, no definite prospect is in sight of the resumption of the work. The committee proposed, after the closure of the nesting orifices, to pull down by means of hooked poles such nests as were built by the Sparrows in the branches of the trees on the Common and Garden, timing visits so as to destroy nests and eggs only, thus preventing the hatching of young. With the onset of cold weather it was proposed to trap and destroy the Sparrow by devices which were already proved at once efficient and merciful. These two methods, aided, perhaps, by others, carefully planned to avoid cruelty, were the ones much relied on by the committee to do the needed work of clearance.

After the stoppage of the work the Mayor wrote to Chairman Osgood, asking his opinion as to the advisability of putting up bird-houses on the Common, so built, without perches, as to keep out the Sparrow and admit the White-bellied Swallow, Bluebird and House Wren. Mr. Osgood replied in effect that perchless bird-houses, judging from recent evidence, would probably invite and shelter the breeding of the Sparrow, and, with the Common still uncleared, would hardly aid in restoring any native bird. He was willing, under certain strict conditions, that the experiment should be tried purely as an experiment, provided that every box should be instantly removed upon proof that these perchless devices sheltered the Sparrow. He, however, expressed little hope that any good would come of such a measure beyond the absolute demonstration, once for all, and publicly, that perchless boxes were not Sparrow-proof. The "Sparrow committee" could not advise the putting up of bird-boxes under existing circumstances, and if any are erected the responsibility for the trial will not rest in any way with this committee. At this writing, the Sparrows shut out from the tree orifices are building to some extent in the branches of the trees upon the Common. To note how extensively this breeding is carried on this season, and to attain general information as to the presence of any native birds upon the Common and Garden, a patrol of the Boston Branch of the American Society of Bird Restorers has been assigned to observation work through the spring and summer.

Results will be officially reported to the National Biological Survey (U. S. Department of Agriculture) at Washington, D. C.

Fletcher Osgood,
Organizer and Manager of the American Society
of Bird Restorers.

Reports of Societies

MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY