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Rh native place, or through distrust of the kind of Sparrow already imported, which, unfortunately, was widely known from the first as the English Sparrow. We can never know how many separate importations were thus made, nor how many thousands of individuals were introduced, but it is certain that the number of places thus supplied with birds is much greater than has been supposed, and considering this fact and the rapid rate at which the Sparrow breeds, we ought not to wonder that it has so completely overrun the country.

METHOD OF DIFFUSION OP THE SPARROW.

In the ninth edition of the EncyclopediaEncyclopædia [sic] Britannica the distinguished ornithologist, Prof. Alfred Newton, makes the following statement:

This statement of the Sparrow's relations to man is unquestionably true wherever the bird is known, and hence in America we should not expect to find it except in settled portions of the country. The manner, however, in which it overruns a new country to which it is introduced differs somewhat from the way in which it extends its range in older countries as the area of cultivation is extended. In America, the method by which the Sparrows spread without the direct aid of man is peculiar. They first invade the larger cities, then the smaller cities and towns, then the villages and hamlets, and finally the populous farming districts.

The cities and towns first invaded by the Sparrow (of course excluding those where they are actually carried by men) are in most cases railroad towns; and especially in the West there is no doubt that the great railways along which vast quantities of grain are transported have been so many great highways along which the Sparrows have traveled slowly from place to place. More or less scattered grain is always to