Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: A few times over the past few years, science writer
Speaker 2: Rosemary Moscow has told me that a good topic for
Speaker 2: this podcast might be the sparrow War, and the first
Speaker 2: couple of times she suggested this, I was like Chairman
Speaker 2: Mouse thing, because we talked about that on the show
Speaker 2: in an episode on the famine that was connected to
Speaker 2: Mao Zedong's four Pests campaign, which involved trying to eradicate spars.
Speaker 1: This is not that.
Speaker 2: The one that Rosemary was suggesting was a dispute over
Speaker 2: the house sparrow, which at the time was often called
Speaker 2: the English sparrow, and the introduction of this bird into
Speaker 2: North America. So Rosemary is the author of a pocket
Speaker 2: Guide to Pigeon Watching, Getting to Know the World's Most
Speaker 2: Misunderstood Bird, along with several other books, and she wrote
Speaker 2: an article about the house sparrow for Autumn Magazine in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three that was titled Meet the Little Brown
Speaker 2: Bird that holds a mirror up to humanity. And this
Speaker 2: is something that she came across while doing research for
Speaker 2: these things that she's written, and just kept.
Speaker 1: Sort of prodding me about it.
Speaker 2: She is right, I do love a ridiculous feud, and
Speaker 2: this was ridiculous, so it took me a while to
Speaker 2: get to it. But thank you Rosemary for the suggestion.
Speaker 2: A lot of people had very strong opinions about how
Speaker 2: sparrows in the late nineteenth century, which continues to be
Speaker 2: true today, but this feud was mainly between Elliot Cows
Speaker 2: and Thomas Mayo Brewer. We're not going to try to
Speaker 2: do full biographies of these two men, but we did
Speaker 2: want to give a glimpse into who they were and
Speaker 2: what they did aside from fighting over sparrows. Thomas Mayo
Speaker 2: Brewer was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November twenty first,
Speaker 2: eighteen fourteen. He was from a well off New England family,
Speaker 2: and his grandfather, Colonel James Brewer, participated in the Boston
Speaker 2: Tea Party. Brewer went to Harvard Medical School, and after
Speaker 2: becoming a doctor, he spent some time with a medical
Speaker 2: practice in Boston's North End, but eventually he left medicine
Speaker 2: and he became an editor at the Boston Atlas, where,
Speaker 2: in the words of an obituary. He became a quote
Speaker 2: political writer of unusual ability.
Speaker 1: He was also interested in birds and in wology, or
Speaker 1: the study of bird eggs. He started publishing on birds
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty seven, and he developed a reputation for
Speaker 1: himself within the field. In eighteen seventy four, he published
Speaker 1: a three volume history of North American birds, which was
Speaker 1: co authored with Spencer F. Baird and Robert Ridgeway Brews.
Speaker 1: The Waterbirds of North America was also published, but posthumously.
Speaker 2: Brewer also became a friend and colleague of John James Audubon.
Speaker 2: Audubon named at least two birds after Brewer, although one
Speaker 2: was a duck that turned out to be a Mallard
Speaker 2: Gadwell hybrid and not a newly described duck species, and
Speaker 2: the other one was a blackbird that had already been
Speaker 2: described by someone else.
Speaker 1: Brewer died on January twenty third, eighteen eighty, at his
Speaker 1: home in Boston, at the age of sixty five. In
Speaker 1: addition to his work in journalism and ornithology, he had
Speaker 1: also served on the Boston School Board. He was survived
Speaker 1: by his wife, Sally R. Coffin, who he had married
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty nine, as well as their daughter Lucy
Speaker 1: Stone Brewer. Thomas and Sally had also had a son, Charles,
Speaker 1: who had died in childhood. During his lifetime, Brewer had
Speaker 1: built a collection of bird eggs that included almost fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand specimens from three thousand different species, described as one
Speaker 1: of the largest such private collections in existence. He left
Speaker 1: this collection to the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge.
Speaker 1: In the words of an obituary in the Bulletin of
Speaker 1: the Nattal Ornithological Club, of which Brewer was a member, quote, Socially,
Speaker 1: doctor Brewer was greatly esteemed. His warm sympathy, his loyalty
Speaker 1: to friends, and to his convictions of truth and duty
Speaker 1: were marked traits in his character removed suddenly, and when
Speaker 1: there were apparently years of activity and leisure before him
Speaker 1: for research. His loss to science is not easily replaced.
Speaker 1: But also in the words the Biographical Dictionary of American
Speaker 1: and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists, quote, Brewer regarded the field
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts birds as his private domain and did not
Speaker 1: think highly of younger generation of ornithologists. One of the
Speaker 1: younger generation of ornithologists was Elliot Ladd Cow's He was
Speaker 1: born on September ninth, eighteen forty two, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: and was also descended from early colonists. When he was
Speaker 1: still a child, his family moved to Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: And that's where he lived for the rest of his
Speaker 1: life life except when he was stationed somewhere else as
Speaker 1: an army surgeon. He studied medicine at Colombian College, which
Speaker 1: is now George Washington University, earning an MD and a PhD.
Speaker 1: Cow's work on birds and his time in the army
Speaker 1: both started while he was still in medical school. He
Speaker 1: published his first work on birds in eighteen sixty one
Speaker 1: at the age of nineteen, and he enlisted in the
Speaker 1: US Army as a medical cadet a year later. He
Speaker 1: was recognized for his work in ornithology right away. That
Speaker 1: first monograph, which was on North American shore birds, was
Speaker 1: described as something that would have reflected well on a
Speaker 1: scientist of much greater experience. Cows also published on mammals
Speaker 1: and reptiles, producing at least three hundred works over the
Speaker 1: span of about twenty years. In addition to all of that,
Speaker 1: he worked with the US Northern Boundary Commission and the
Speaker 1: US Geological and Geographical Survey of the territories in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Cow's major work on birds included Key to North Americans Birds,
Speaker 2: which first came out in eighteen seventy two. His Checklist
Speaker 2: of North American Birds was published in eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: and Field Ornithology came out in eighteen seventy four. He
Speaker 2: also edited and published the journals and other writings of
Speaker 2: a number of explorers and travelers, including the History of
Speaker 2: the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Expeditions of Zebulon
Speaker 2: Montgomery Pike. In eighteen seventy seven, he was elected a
Speaker 2: member of the National Academy of Science, and eventually became
Speaker 2: a member of most of the scientific societies in the
Speaker 2: US and Europe for a time. Cows was also deeply
Speaker 2: interested in spiritualism and theosophy. He wrote a number of
Speaker 2: works on these subjects, including, for example, two letters in
Speaker 2: the Nation on December twenty fifth, eighteen eighty four, one
Speaker 2: on psychic research and the other on the feasibility of
Speaker 2: studying ghosts. The letter on ghosts discusses all the ways
Speaker 2: that ghosts can be studied using evidence gathered through a
Speaker 2: person's senses, including writing that ghosts quote frequently, not usually
Speaker 2: emit a perceptible odor, sometimes very strong, sometimes fragrant, sometimes
Speaker 2: the reverse, nearly always peculiar to themselves. He was a
Speaker 2: friend of past podcast subject Madam Blovotsky, and held offices
Speaker 2: in the Theosophical Society, including serving as president of its
Speaker 2: American Board of Control. But in eighteen ninety The New
Speaker 2: York Sun published an expose titled Blovotsky Unveiled. This took
Speaker 2: the form of an interview with Cows. I don't know
Speaker 2: what caused his sudden about face here, but afterward he
Speaker 2: was expelled from the Society. Blovotsky filed suit against him
Speaker 2: and against the Sun, but then she died in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety one. After her death, the Sun retracted the expose,
Speaker 2: and this almost became its own episode. It could maybe
Speaker 2: one day, but it's was eventually like you gotta go
Speaker 2: back to the sparrows now, right. Madam Blovotsky had a
Speaker 2: lot of ups and downs with people, so I'm not
Speaker 2: entirely surprised. Elliott Cows died at the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Speaker 2: in Baltimore, Maryland, on December twenty fifth, eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: at the age of fifty seven. I was following a
Speaker 2: pair of surgical procedures. He had been in a coma,
Speaker 2: but in the moments before his death he reportedly regained consciousness,
Speaker 2: sat upright, and said, welcome, Oh, welcome, beloved death before dying.
Speaker 2: Cows had been married twice, first to Jane Augusta McKinney
Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty seven. They had five children, three of
Speaker 2: whom survived childhood. Their marriage ended in divorce in eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty six, and the announcement of the divorce that ran
Speaker 2: in the Washington DC Evening Star describes Cows not as
Speaker 2: a doctor or as a scientist, but as the noted theosophist.
Speaker 2: His second wife was Mary Emily Bates, who he married
Speaker 2: in eighteen eighty seven. In the words of a biographical
Speaker 2: moir of Cows that was read before the National Academy
Speaker 2: of Sciences in nineteen oh nine, quote as an antagonist,
Speaker 2: he was sometimes bitter and unforgiving. The only mention of
Speaker 2: Sparrows in that piece is in the footnote to that sentence,
Speaker 2: which reads, quote, an unfortunate illustration is his controversy with
Speaker 2: the late doctor T. M. Brewer, of which doctor Cows
Speaker 2: himself said, twenty years after the death of his opponent,
Speaker 2: the controversy had become between doctor Brewer and myself, a
Speaker 2: personal feud with the usual accompaniments in the way of
Speaker 2: sweetness and light. We'll get to what they were feuding
Speaker 2: about after a sponsor break. In the eighteen fifties, caterpillars
Speaker 2: were a problem in the Eastern United States. Different accounts
Speaker 2: named different caterpillars, but most of them are moth larvae
Speaker 2: that kind of dangle from their silk, and they were
Speaker 2: colloqu called things like dropworms or canker worms. Rosemary Moscow's
Speaker 2: article on the house sparrow cites an inch worm called
Speaker 2: the elm span worm. Other sources cite linden moth larvae,
Speaker 2: which are also inch worms. During an outbreak, these caterpillars
Speaker 2: defoliate trees, drop onto people and surfaces, poop everywhere, and
Speaker 2: they just generally make a big mess. Most of the time.
Speaker 2: The damage from a caterpillar outbreak is unsightly, but healthy
Speaker 2: trees can't typically survive a year or two of caterpillar defoliation.
Speaker 2: Usually trees only die if there's also something else going on,
Speaker 2: like a drought, or a disease, or if the caterpillars
Speaker 2: defoliate the same tree year after year after year. Caterpillar
Speaker 2: outbreaks are usually cyclical. Typically they eventually end on their own,
Speaker 2: but people often want to try to do something about them,
Speaker 2: and one proposed solution for the caterpillar problem in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century was to import house sparrows or passer
Speaker 2: domesticus from Europe. These are small, stockybirds and shades of buff, brown, gray,
Speaker 2: and black, with the males more brightly colored than the females.
Speaker 2: They're native to a lot of Europe and Asia, as
Speaker 2: well as northern Africa. So to today's ear, introducing a
Speaker 2: non native bird species with the hope of controlling caterpillars
Speaker 2: with them probably sounds like an obviously bad idea. This
Speaker 2: is Homer Simpson logic. We have talked on the show
Speaker 2: before about what happened when people tried to use kudzu,
Speaker 2: which is native to East Asia, for erosion control in
Speaker 2: the United States, and what happened when colonists brought rabbits
Speaker 2: from Europe to Australia because they wanted Australia to feel
Speaker 2: more like Britain. Kudzu was later nicknamed the vine that
Speaker 2: ate the South, and we discussed those rabbits in an
Speaker 2: episode about an attempt to fence off an entire portion
Speaker 2: of Australia just to contain them. There are actually three
Speaker 2: fences because the rabbits kept getting ahead of the fence bill.
Speaker 2: But this sparrow importation idea was happening alongside the acclimatization movement,
Speaker 2: which developed primarily in the UK and France in the
Speaker 2: eighteen thirties and forties. This movement was connected to colonialism,
Speaker 2: and it was focused on introducing non native species and
Speaker 2: acclimatizing them to their new homes, as well as reshaping
Speaker 2: the world through the introduction of these plants and animals.
Speaker 2: This was more intentional and systemic than most earlier efforts
Speaker 2: to try to introduce non native plants and animals to
Speaker 2: other parts of the world, so things like the introduction
Speaker 2: of food crops from the Americas to Europe and vice versa.
Speaker 2: Starting in the late fifteenth century, there were more than
Speaker 2: fifty acclimatization societies around the world by nineteen hundred, and
Speaker 2: while the ones in the United States were established after
Speaker 2: the sparrows had already been introduced, the acclimatization movement was like.
Speaker 2: Part of the context for their introductions was all to
Speaker 2: how people were thinking about what it was okay to
Speaker 2: do with non native plants and animals.
Speaker 1: The first attempts to introduce how sparrows into North America
Speaker 1: were not successful. One of the earliest was in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty when the Brooklyn Institute in New York got eight
Speaker 1: pairs of sparrows from England and kept them in cages
Speaker 1: over the winter. The birds did not thrive when they
Speaker 1: were released in the spring, but the birds fared a
Speaker 1: bit better in a second attempt two years later. The
Speaker 1: first really successful effort was likely in Portland, Maine, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: Soon other cities were discussing whether they should import house
Speaker 2: sparrows as well. Cities started buying hundreds or even thousands
Speaker 2: of sparrows, mostly from England or Germany, and then releasing
Speaker 2: them into their parks and other green spaces. A number
Speaker 2: of articles written more recently about the sparrow war also
Speaker 2: described immigrants to the United States as wanting to have
Speaker 2: familiar birds around. It kind of conjures up images of
Speaker 2: like people getting onto a steamship with a pair of
Speaker 2: birds in a cage. Really, though, the biggest releases of
Speaker 2: sparrows in the United States seem to have been carried
Speaker 2: out by cities or civic organizations, not people coming to
Speaker 2: the US with a couple of familiar birds.
Speaker 1: And at first there was a lot of enthusiasm around
Speaker 1: the idea that the sparrows might save everyone from all
Speaker 1: those pesky caterpillars. For example, in eighteen fifty nine, William
Speaker 1: Cullen Bryan wrote a poem called The Old World Sparrow,
Speaker 1: which began, we hear the note of a stranger bird
Speaker 1: that ne'er till now in our land was heard. A
Speaker 1: winged settler has taken his place with tutons and men
Speaker 1: of Celtic race. He has followed their paths to our hemisphere.
Speaker 1: The Old World sparrow, at last is here the insects
Speaker 1: legion that sting our fruit and strip the leaves from
Speaker 1: the growing shoot, A swarming, skulking, ravenous tribe which Harris
Speaker 1: and Flint so well describe but cannot destroy. May quail
Speaker 1: with fear for the Old World sparrow. Their bane is here.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking something about this poem feels a little
Speaker 1: racist to me, we're gonna get to that later.
Speaker 2: Uh. And not everybody thought this was a great idea,
Speaker 2: especially as the number of sparrows started to grow and
Speaker 2: people realized that they were not only not magically ridding
Speaker 2: North America of unwanted caterpillars, but were also eating grain
Speaker 2: and other food crops. In April of eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Charles Pickering spoke before the Boston Society of Natural History
Speaker 2: describing the introduction of the European house sparrow as threatening
Speaker 2: a great evil. According to the society proceedings, he cited
Speaker 2: proofs from quote standard authors that showed that the bird
Speaker 2: had been quote the acknowledged enemy of mankind for more
Speaker 2: than five thousand years. In eighteen sixty eight, Thomas Mayo
Speaker 2: Brewer came to the house sparrow's defense in Atlantic Monthly, writing, quote,
Speaker 2: the sparrow is not all evil.
Speaker 1: That he does. A great deal of good is now
Speaker 1: universally admitted. The good already accomplished by the few of
Speaker 1: his race domiciled among us, is indisputable and of the
Speaker 1: first importance. Brewer did acknowledge that there were reports of
Speaker 1: the birds eating ripening grain, but he ended this piece
Speaker 1: with quote, the house sparrow will erelong become one of
Speaker 1: our most common and familiar favorites. By eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: Elliott Cows was voicing his doubts about the sparrows. On
Speaker 1: May twenty eighth of that year, he wrote to zoologists
Speaker 1: an ornithologist to J. A. Allen, saying, quote, do you
Speaker 1: share my apprehension about that wretched ornithological bouvers mont passer domesticus.
Speaker 1: I despise the site of that bird in this country.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how Alan responded, but at this point
Speaker 1: he might not have actually shared Cow's apprehension. Yet two
Speaker 1: years earlier he had written a piece on the rarer
Speaker 1: birds of Massachusetts for The American Naturalist, and he had
Speaker 1: said of the sparrows quote two pairs turned loose in
Speaker 1: the Boston Common a few years since seemed to be
Speaker 1: slowly increasing in numbers, and bid fair to be of
Speaker 1: great service in checking the ravages of several species of
Speaker 1: caterpillars that now greatly injure the foliage of the shade trees.
Speaker 1: These interesting birds are now frequently observable, both on the
Speaker 1: common and in the public garden. Cows also voiced his
Speaker 1: apprehension in his Key to North American Birds, which came
Speaker 1: out that same year. It described the birds as already
Speaker 1: abundant in many towns and cities of the Eastern and
Speaker 1: Middle States, and also recently introduced into Salt Lake City. Quote,
Speaker 1: it has proved highly beneficial by destroying cankerworms. The pest
Speaker 1: of our shade trees, and our dusty streets are enlivened
Speaker 1: with its presence. But if it continues to multiply at
Speaker 1: the present rate, it must soon overflow municipal limits. And
Speaker 1: then the result of the contact of this hardy foreigner
Speaker 1: with our native birds may cause us to regret its introduction,
Speaker 1: unless it finds natural enemies to check its increase. So
Speaker 1: Cows and Brewer already had differing opinions on this sparrow,
Speaker 1: but until this point their relationship seems to have been
Speaker 1: pretty cordial. Cows had referred to Brewer as a friend.
Speaker 1: But things started to become acrimonious in eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that after a sponsor break. By
Speaker 1: the early eighteen seventies, it had become clear that how
Speaker 1: sparrows were not going to save North America from caterpillars.
Speaker 1: They did eat caterpillars, but in some areas that inchworm
Speaker 1: outbreak had ended and a new caterpillar outbreak had started,
Speaker 1: but these were fuzzy caterpillars that the sparrows apparently did
Speaker 1: not like to eat. The sparrows also liked to eat grain,
Speaker 1: that was of course a problem with crops, but they
Speaker 1: also liked to pick partially digested grain out of horse manure,
Speaker 1: which was all over the streets and cities and towns
Speaker 1: and the era before or the introduction of automobiles, So
Speaker 1: people obviously thought that was gross and that the birds
Speaker 1: were unsanitary. House sparrows also like to nest in and
Speaker 1: near buildings, and they like to congregate in the foliage
Speaker 1: and sing together, and people found their chirping very annoying.
Speaker 1: In July of eighteen seventy four, Elliot Cows reported a
Speaker 1: communication from ornithologist and naturalist Thomas G. Gentry in the
Speaker 1: Zoology section of American Naturalists, saying that European sparrows were
Speaker 1: driving robins, bluebirds, and native sparrows away from Germantown, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and that their population was growing rapidly. Cows added to
Speaker 1: this quote, I did not expect the bad news quite
Speaker 1: so soon. Probably it will not be long before we
Speaker 1: hear the same complaints from other places. I have always
Speaker 1: been opposed to the introduction of the birds, mainly on
Speaker 1: this score, but also for other reasons. There is no
Speaker 1: occasion for them in this country. The good they do
Speaker 1: in destroying certain insects has been overrated. I foresee the
Speaker 1: time when it will be deemed advisable to take measures
Speaker 1: to get rid of the birds, or at least to
Speaker 1: check their increase.
Speaker 2: In September, American Naturalists printed a response from Thomas Brewer,
Speaker 2: who wrote, quote, I regret very much that a naturalist,
Speaker 2: generally so well informed as doctor Cows should aid in
Speaker 2: giving what my own observations compel me to believe to
Speaker 2: be an altogether wrong statement in regard to the House Sparrow.
Speaker 2: Brewer described Cows as biased. I mean he had admitted
Speaker 2: he was opposed to the bird's introduction from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Brewer said, now Cows was condemning the birds based on
Speaker 2: the scantiest of evidence. Brewer also rejected Gentry's report entirely,
Speaker 2: and he refuted it point by point, but his refutation
Speaker 2: mostly involved him saying that he did not believe what
Speaker 2: Gentry had written, and he had not observed the birds
Speaker 2: doing those things, and had in fact seen the opposite.
Speaker 1: Brewer and Cows also had a similar back and forth
Speaker 1: in American Sportsmen, and in eighteen seventy seven they rehashed
Speaker 1: the entire same argument in the Washington Gazette. By this point,
Speaker 1: most ornithologists and other scientists generally agreed with Cow's position
Speaker 1: on the sparrows, but Brewer still had defenders from other fields.
Speaker 1: Clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, condemned
Speaker 1: cows and praised the sparrow in a piece called Sparrows
Speaker 1: to the Rescue, which was published in the Christian Union
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven. Beecher wrote of cows, quote, his
Speaker 1: name shall be known in the Kingdom of Birds as
Speaker 1: a public foe. A price shall be put upon his head,
Speaker 1: and on some day, unawares, he shall be surrounded by
Speaker 1: swarms of sparrows, darkening the sun, and multitudinous as the
Speaker 1: locusts of Minnesota. This piece then kind of becomes the
Speaker 1: reenactment of Offered Hitchcock's The Birds, with the birds targeting cows.
Speaker 1: Other opponents included Henry Burr, founder of the American Society
Speaker 1: for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who called him a murderer.
Speaker 1: In January of eighteen seventy eight, Brewer visited Cows at
Speaker 1: his office in Washington, d c. Where their discussion apparently
Speaker 1: became heated. Cow said the Nuttall Ornithological Club, of which
Speaker 1: Brewer was a member, should investigate the impact of the
Speaker 1: house sparrow, and the club did, but Brewer did not
Speaker 1: attend the open meeting where the birds were discussed, and
Speaker 1: the club's other members were critical of the sparrows. A
Speaker 1: couple of incredibly insulting articles about the club then appeared
Speaker 1: in the Boston Evening Transcript and the Boston Journal. Cows
Speaker 1: accused Brewer of writing them. Brewer denied that.
Speaker 2: In the August eighteen seventy eight issue of American Naturalists,
Speaker 2: there was an article by Elliot Cows called the ineligibility
Speaker 2: of the European house sparrow in America. He began, quote,
Speaker 2: it is very regrettable that the sparrow question, which has
Speaker 2: already become a matter of national moment, should have degenerated
Speaker 2: into such a miserable personal controversy between the sentimentalists who
Speaker 2: misrepresent the facts, and the ornithologists who understand them, that
Speaker 2: a prudent person, whatever his views, might refrain from having
Speaker 2: anything to do with it. After describing it as the
Speaker 2: conscientious discharge of his duty to lay out all the facts,
Speaker 2: Cows continued, quote, I do not write for ornithologists. So
Speaker 2: far as I am aware, there is not a scientific
Speaker 2: ornithologist in America among those who have expressed any decided
Speaker 2: opinion who are in favor of the wretched interlopers which
Speaker 2: we have so thoughtlessly introduced and played with and cuddled
Speaker 2: like a parcel of hysterical slate pencil eating schoolgirls. He
Speaker 2: then went on to insult Brewer specifically, although without naming him, quote,
Speaker 2: I am in position to affirm that the sneers, the invectives,
Speaker 2: the ridicule and abuse, and the wildest assertions of the
Speaker 2: leader or leaders of the pro Sparrow faction result from
Speaker 2: a frantic despair in the face of the facts which
Speaker 2: ornithologists coolly adduce. With that out of the way, he
Speaker 2: characterized the Sparrow's defenders as quote, first, those who know
Speaker 2: nothing and care nothing particularly about them, except that they
Speaker 2: rather like the pert and brusque familiarity of the birds,
Speaker 2: a class composed chiefly of children, women, and old fogies. Secondly,
Speaker 2: those who are or were instrumental in getting the birds here,
Speaker 2: and are interested either in reputation or in pocket to
Speaker 2: keep them here. Thirdly, quasi ornithologists who have been misled
Speaker 2: into hasty expressions of opinion to which they feel bound
Speaker 2: to stick. Fourthly, the clackers of the last, who play
Speaker 2: a sort of Simon says up game. Fifthly, a very
Speaker 2: few intelligent and scientific persons, but not practical nor professional ornithologists,
Speaker 2: who recognize fully what little good the sparrow undeniably does,
Speaker 2: and shape a favorable argument, mainly from the undisputed advantages
Speaker 2: which result from a certain, just and proper number of
Speaker 2: sparrows in Europe. Cows then offered five arguments against the
Speaker 2: house sparrow. They don't do the thing they were imported
Speaker 2: to do, which was eat all the caterpillars. They attack, harass,
Speaker 2: and sometimes kill native birds. They destroy things like kitchen
Speaker 2: gardens and grain fields. Quote, they are personally obnoxious and
Speaker 2: unpleasant to many persons. And lastly, they have no natural
Speaker 2: enemies than nothing to check their spread. There's a great
Speaker 2: quote from point four, which reads quote I am not
Speaker 2: a delicate woman, nor yet a squeamish man to be
Speaker 2: shocked by their perpetual antics during the spring and summer.
Speaker 2: Being something of an anatomist, I can stand it without embarrassment.
Speaker 2: But all are not thus constituted.
Speaker 1: He also threw in another dig at Brewer, again without
Speaker 1: naming him, quote, Let the authorities of any of our
Speaker 1: large cities, preferably Boston, where the birds are said to
Speaker 1: have done so much good, and where the sparrow combination
Speaker 1: talks loudest, furnished to proper persons, say five hundred sparrows,
Speaker 1: whose stomachs shall be examined by some competent botanist and
Speaker 1: entomologist together. Cows ended the article by recommending that the
Speaker 1: birds be left to take care of themselves, so people
Speaker 1: should not feed them, put up bird houses to protect them,
Speaker 1: or kill their predators, and he advised that any laws
Speaker 1: protecting how sparrows should be repealed. That way, if, for example,
Speaker 1: boy Scouts wanted to start a sparrow killing project, nothing
Speaker 1: would get in their way. Cows was also.
Speaker 2: Insulting Brewer in his personal correspondence on May nineteenth, eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, he sent Ja Allen the following poem quote,
Speaker 2: there was an old person of Beacon Street, of whom
Speaker 2: history itself doth repeat, that he stood on his head
Speaker 2: till the sparrow's all said. It is quite an anonymous
Speaker 2: feat that September Cows published on the present status of
Speaker 2: Passer domesticus in America, with special reference to the Western
Speaker 2: States and territories. This was sort of an annotated bibliography
Speaker 2: of the Sparrow controversy, including his own publications Brewers and
Speaker 2: that of several others. Cows makes his opinions about Brewer
Speaker 2: very clear, for example, describing an anonymous piece that he
Speaker 2: attributed to Brewer as quote one of doctor Brewer's most
Speaker 2: amusing tirades, and Cows described his own the ineligibility of
Speaker 2: the European House Sparrow in America as quote a general
Speaker 2: statement of the case indicting the sparrow with specific charges
Speaker 2: and recommendations. Yeah, just to be super clear, that's that piece.
Speaker 2: We just read a bunch of really insulting passages from
Speaker 2: where he insulted all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: Listen, it's just a general statement of the case. Uh.
Speaker 2: About four months after Cows published this article. Brewer died,
Speaker 2: so unfortunately we don't have like a point by point
Speaker 2: rebuttal from him. He passed away three years after that.
Speaker 2: Cows accepted that it was not possible to eradicate the
Speaker 2: house sparrow in North America, writing that he quote led
Speaker 2: the sparrow war for twenty years that only surrendered to
Speaker 2: the inevitable. Cows did not stop criticizing Brewer, though. In
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine, the USDA Division of Economic Ornithology and
Speaker 2: Mammalogy issued its first bulletin, which was a four hundred
Speaker 2: page report on what was then called the English sparrow.
Speaker 2: Cows didn't think the bulletin gave him enough credit, which
Speaker 2: apparently revived his animosity toward Brewer. In eighteen ninety, a
Speaker 2: new addition to his Key to North American Birds was published,
Speaker 2: which revised the description of the house sparrow to include quote,
Speaker 2: well informed persons denounce the bird without avail during the
Speaker 2: years when it might have been abated. But further protest
Speaker 2: is futile, for the sparrows have it all their own
Speaker 2: way and can afford to le legislature like rats, mice, cockroaches,
Speaker 2: and other parasites of the human race which we have imported.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety seven, after becoming editor of an ornithology
Speaker 2: magazine called The Osprey, Cows wrote a regular feature called
Speaker 2: Doctor Cows's Column, and in one of those he called
Speaker 2: Brewer quote a narrow minded, prejudiced, tactlest person. When people
Speaker 2: criticized him as being in poor taste for writing that,
Speaker 2: he doubled down, saying Quote, the harm he did was
Speaker 2: incalculable and his name deserves to be stigmatized as long
Speaker 2: as there is a sparrow left in the United States
Speaker 2: to shriek Brewer Brewer Brewer, then Cows died two years later.
Speaker 2: When Brewer and Cows were writing about the qualities and
Speaker 2: behavior of how sparrows, both of them were mostly dealing
Speaker 2: in anecdotes. Neither of them had much data to back
Speaker 2: up the actual impact of these birds on North America.
Speaker 2: It was true that the sparrows didn't eat as many
Speaker 2: caterpillars sus expected, and that they ate grain and other crops,
Speaker 2: and that they chirped a lot, and that they picked
Speaker 2: seeds out of manure. It was also true that they
Speaker 2: attacked and killed nesting birds, including bluebirds, and we know
Speaker 2: today that they can carry diseases such as West Nile
Speaker 2: virus and salmonella. But these same things are also true
Speaker 2: of other birds, including other birds that are native to
Speaker 2: North America. And when it comes to predation, so many
Speaker 2: other animals also prey on nesting birds. But the response
Speaker 2: to house sparrows became particularly hostile, and this was connected
Speaker 2: to how people talked about them. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: people were describing house sparrows in much the same way
Speaker 2: that they were describing human immigrants to the United States,
Speaker 2: and this was a period of increasing nativism and xenophobia.
Speaker 2: Both house sparrows and human immigrants were described as dirty
Speaker 2: and lazy. They made too much noise, they had too
Speaker 2: many babies. They were going to take over the country,
Speaker 2: overwhelming the native bird population or the white population that
Speaker 2: hailed from the so called right parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: This was not just a coincidental use of similar language.
Speaker 1: It was connected to how people saw these birds. For example,
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven, Elliot Cows co authored a book
Speaker 1: called Citizen Bird, which was about birds and nature, but
Speaker 1: also about values like citizenship. It used sparrows as an
Speaker 1: example of bad citizens, including the passage quote they increased
Speaker 1: very fast and spread everywhere, quarreling with and driving out
Speaker 1: the good citizens who belonged to the regular birdland guilds,
Speaker 1: taking their homes and making themselves nuisances. The wise men
Speaker 1: protested against bringing these sparrows, but no one heeded their
Speaker 1: warning until it was too late. Now it is decided
Speaker 1: that these sparrows are bad citizens and criminals, so they
Speaker 1: are condemned by everyone.
Speaker 2: This use of language was also connected to the eugenics movement,
Speaker 2: so a while later and nineteen thirty for example, eugenicist
Speaker 2: and conservationist C. M. Gaety equated immigration to the United
Speaker 2: States from Mexico with the quote sparrow problem, describing the
Speaker 2: quote songless immigrant as displacing American birds that were quote songsters,
Speaker 2: insects destroyers, weed seed eaters. He continued by saying that
Speaker 2: the quote old type American is similarly being displaced with
Speaker 2: Mexican slum inhabitants.
Speaker 1: As another example, architect Philip Johnson published an article titled
Speaker 1: are we a Dying People in July of nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: by which point eugenics was falling out of favor in
Speaker 1: the United States, but had been adopted and expanded by
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany. This article was about the idea that white
Speaker 1: people were not having enough babies and that quote, the
Speaker 1: United States of America is committing race suicide. It's said
Speaker 1: in part quote. The course of nature is not predestined.
Speaker 1: Human will is a part of the biological process us.
Speaker 1: Our will, for example, interferes constantly in the world of
Speaker 1: lower animals. When English sparrows threaten to drive out our songbirds,
Speaker 1: we shoot the sparrows rather than letting nature and Darwin
Speaker 1: take their course. Thus, the songbirds, thanks to our will,
Speaker 1: become the fittest and survive. So of course, language like
Speaker 1: this is still around today. It still shows up in
Speaker 1: conversations about immigration, and it still shows up in conversations
Speaker 1: about all kinds of non native species, including European starlings,
Speaker 1: which were intentionally introduced to North America decades after how
Speaker 1: sparrows were long after people had decided that the house
Speaker 1: sparrows were a problem and should not have been introduced.
Speaker 1: And people still have extremely strong feelings about how sparrows,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to their killing other birds or
Speaker 1: driving them from their nests. Today, how sparrows are widespread
Speaker 1: over most of North America and part of South America,
Speaker 1: umber seem to have declined in recent decades, and they
Speaker 1: seem to be declining in Europe and Asia as well.
Speaker 1: The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Some possibilities
Speaker 1: include disease, pollution, changing climate, and changes in the food
Speaker 1: that is available to them. Also, we mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: the episode that John James Audubon had named a couple
Speaker 1: of birds after Brewer. There's been an ongoing discussion about
Speaker 1: renaming eponymously named birds in the United States. On November one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, the American Ornithological Society announced that it
Speaker 1: was committing to changing all English language bird names within
Speaker 1: its jurisdiction for birds that are named after people or
Speaker 1: whose names are otherwise offensive or exclusionary. In the words
Speaker 1: of the Society's Executive director and CEO, doctor Judas scarl Quote,
Speaker 1: there has been historic bias in how birds are named
Speaker 1: and who might have a bird named in their honor.
Speaker 1: Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the eighteen hundreds, clouded by
Speaker 1: racism and misogyny, don't work for us today, and the
Speaker 1: time has come for us to transform this process and
Speaker 1: redirect the focus to the birds where it belongs. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there is a similar movement regarding animals,
Speaker 1: but there is one at least that I know of,
Speaker 1: which is the Cou's whitetailed deer, right, which is named
Speaker 1: after Elliott Cows, but most people say it cous. So
Speaker 1: if you know about these deer and you think we've
Speaker 1: been saying his name wrong this whole time, uh, the
Speaker 1: deer technically also pronounced cows, but nobody really says it
Speaker 1: that way. This is how language evolves, which then brings
Speaker 1: up a different thing of like, well, it might be
Speaker 1: named after him, but no one calls it by his
Speaker 1: actual name. Do we still need to change it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, uh, yeah, I don't know. And as I said,
Speaker 2: I have no idea if there's been a similar discussion
Speaker 2: about the names of non bird species. I have some
Speaker 2: listener made before we finish up today. This is from Shelley,
Speaker 2: and Shelley wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, I just listened
Speaker 2: to your behind the scenes about the metric system and
Speaker 2: had to write in I'm a middle school math and
Speaker 2: science teacher, and the experiences about math classes both of
Speaker 2: you shared really resonated with me, both from personal experience
Speaker 2: and what I learned in grad school about the history
Speaker 2: of math education in the US. Allie, what you shared
Speaker 2: about the trauma of timed multiplication tests is a really
Speaker 2: common experience. It's when most people in this country identify
Speaker 2: as when I stopped liking math. Joe Baller, professor of
Speaker 2: mathematics education at Stanford, calls US a math traumatized nation
Speaker 2: as a result of the emphasis on speed and memorization
Speaker 2: over understanding for so many years in our education system.
Speaker 2: I can tell you the day I started liking math.
Speaker 2: It was the day we used the quadratic equation in
Speaker 2: high school chemistry, because I finally saw both the purpose
Speaker 2: of math and why it worked the way it did.
Speaker 1: I also wanted.
Speaker 2: To share this article by Joe Baller and Lang Chen
Speaker 2: and The Atlantic, why kids should use their fingers in
Speaker 2: math class. Tracy, I hope it helps you feel better
Speaker 2: about using your fingers for arithmetic. They're one of the
Speaker 2: best tools for math we as humans have. Thanks for
Speaker 2: all the great work you do on the podcast The
Speaker 2: History of Science episodes are my favorites. Cheers, Shelley. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much, Shelley for this email. I had not
Speaker 2: seen that article and I was only able to kind
Speaker 2: of skim it this morning, But man, boy, do I
Speaker 2: wish there had been some encouragement about, you know, how
Speaker 2: to use your fingers to learn math better rather than
Speaker 2: just like being yelled.
Speaker 1: At to stop doing it. Right. Oh, I remember the
Speaker 1: policing of it in one of my elementary school math
Speaker 1: classes during a test where the teacher literally was like,
Speaker 1: if I see you using your fingers under the desk,
Speaker 1: you will fail the test. And it's like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just thinking us all more scared of math, right. And
Speaker 1: I have long suspected that one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: had trouble with arithmetic is I really liked, like we
Speaker 1: would have little bears to count and sort into different
Speaker 1: colors and things like that, and anything involved like counting
Speaker 1: the bears or counting numbers of things, like adding things
Speaker 1: when there were objects there representing the things, right, that
Speaker 1: was fine. But when I needed to move into the
Speaker 1: abstract of doing it in my head, like I just
Speaker 1: was not able to make that bridge very well. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sending that article. If anybody
Speaker 1: else wants to google it again, and it's called why
Speaker 1: kids should use their fingers in math class? If you
Speaker 1: would like to send us a note about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast or at history Podcasts. At iHeartRadio dot com,
Speaker 1: we're on social media and missed in History and you
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