cts, or at any rate has the reputation of doing
so, and he does not often attack the fruit.

"Well, we got the sparrow here, and he increased and multiplied until
he became very numerous, and what do you suppose the little wretch did?

"He did not do anything that we wanted him to do. He abandoned his
English practise of eating insects, and lived wholly upon grain and
fruit. In the fruit season he is a perfect terror in the devastation he
makes among our fruit trees. A flock of sparrows will make its
appearance in a cherry garden where there are twenty, fifty, or perhaps
a hundred cherry trees bending beneath a burden of fruit just about ripe
enough to be picked. They save the owner the trouble and expense of
picking his fruit, as they take entire charge of it, and in a few days
the whole crop is ruined. Other fruit suffers in the same way, and the
testimony is the same from all parts of Australia. One of the colonial
governments had an investigation of the subject at one time, and the
testimony was something appalling. The sparrows abound here in countless
millions, all of them descended from fifty birds that were imported
about the year 1860. The owners of vineyards, as well as the fruit
farmers, complain of the ravages of the sparrows, and at the official
investigation that I mentioned one vine grower testified that his crop
of grapes the previous year would have been two tons, but the sparrows
destroyed the entire lot.

"Another bird almost as destructive as the sparrow is the _mina_ or
_mino_, a bird which was brought here from India. It is quite a handsome
bird, and can learn to talk almost as readily as the parrot, and that is
why it was brought here. It lives on fruits and vegetables, and has very
nearly the same habits as the sparrow. The colonial government have
placed a bounty upon the heads and eggs of the sparrow, and also on
those of the mina. A great many boys and men, too, make a fairly good
revenue in killing the birds or plundering their nests. The birds are
trapped, shot, or poisoned, but their number does not seem to diminish.

"Somebody brought a daisy to Australia, as it is a very popular flower
in England, and was expected to remind the English settler of his old
home. It has spread very rapidly, and on thousands upon thousands of
acres it has rooted out the native grasses and taken full possession of
the soil. Another plant has a history which would be ludicrous if it
were not so serious, and