The Great English Sparrow War

In the 19th century, a heated dispute arose over the house sparrow and its introduction into North America. Elliot Coues and Thomas Mayo Brewer held opposing opinions on the matter which they defended their entire lives.

Research:

• Mosco, Rosemary. “Meet the Little Brown Bird That Holds a Mirror Up to Humanity.” Audubon. 4/5/2023. https://www.audubon.org/news/meet-little-brown-bird-holds-mirror-humanity
• Wills, Matthew. “The Great Sparrow War of the 1870s.” JSTOR Daily. 6/23/2016. https://daily.jstor.org/the-great-sparrow-war-of-the-1870s/
• Sterling, Keir B. et al, editors. “Thomas Mayo Brewer.” From Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists.” Greenwood Press. 1997. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/yc_pubs/9/
• Glass, Chris. “The House Sparrow in Boston, Part I.” Boston Public Library Blog. 7/28/2022. https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-house-sparrow-in-boston-part-i/
• Glass, Chris. “The House Sparrow in Boston, Part II.” Boston Public Library Blog. 7/28/2022. https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-house-sparrow-in-boston-part-ii/
• Glass, Chris. “The House Sparrow in Boston, Part III.” Boston Public Library Blog. 7/28/2022. https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-house-sparrow-in-boston-part-iii/
• Ashworth, William B. “Scientist of the Day – Thomas Mayo Brewer.” Linda Hall Library. 11/21/2018. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/thomas-mayo-brewer/
• Burton, Adrian. “Suffering sparrows.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. doi:10.1002/fee.2632. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/fee.2632
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Elliott Coues". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elliott-Coues. Accessed 11 December 2023.
• Allen, J.A. “Biographical Memoir of Elliot Coues: 1842-1899.” Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 1909. https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/coues-elliott.pdf
• Evening star. [volume], July 28, 1886, Image 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1886-07-28/ed-1/seq-1/
• Coues, Elliott. “Psychic Research” and “Can Ghosts Be Investigated?” The Nation. 12/25/1884. https://books.google.com/books?id=5ixMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA543#v=onepage&q&f=false
• Dearborn, Ned. “How to Destroy English Sparrows.” Government Printing Office. 1910. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc85667/m1/1/
• Gurney, J.H. et al. “The House Sparrow.” London, W. Wesley and Son. 1885. https://archive.org/details/housesparrow00gurn/
• Cutright, Paul Russell. “Elliott Coues : naturalist and frontier historian.” Urbana : University of Illinois Press. 1981.
• Thomas Mayo Brewer. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 15 (May, 1879 -May, 1880). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25138584
• Brodhead, Michael J. “Elliott Coues and the Sparrow War.” The New England Quarterly , Sep., 1971, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1971). https://www.jstor.org/stable/364783
• Anderson, Warwick. “Climates of Opinion: Acclimatization in Nineteenth-Century France and England.” Victorian Studies , Winter, 1992, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter, 1992). https://www.jstor.org/stable/3828004
• Osborne, Michael A. “Acclimatizing the World: A History of the Paradigmatic Colonial Science.” Osiris , 2000, Vol. 15, Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise (2000). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/301945
• Fine, Gary Allen and Lazaros Christoforides. “Dirty Birds, Filthy Immigrants, and the English Sparrow War: Metaphorical Linkage in Constructing Social Problems.” Symbolic Interaction , Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter 1991). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.1991.14.4.375
• Coates, Peter. “Eastenders Go West: English Sparrows, Immigrants, and the Nature of Fear.” Journal of American Studies , Dec., 2005, Vol. 39, No. 3, British Association for American Studies 50th Anniversary (Dec., 2005). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27557692
• Coues, Dr. Elliott. “The Ineligibility of the European House Sparrow in America.” The American Naturalist. Vol. XII, No. 8 August 1878.
• Allen, J.A. “Notes on Some of the Rarer Birds of Massachusetts (Continued).” The American Naturalist , Feb., 1870, Vol. 3, No. 12 (Feb., 1870). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2446674
• Robbins, Chandler S. “Introduction, Spread, and Present Abundance of the House Sparrow in North America.” Ornithological Monographs , 1973, No. 14, A Symposium on the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) and European Tree Sparrow (P. Montanus) in North America (1973). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40168051
• Coues, Elliott. “On the Present Status of Passer Domesticus in America With Special Reference to the Western States and Territories.” United States Geological Survey. Extracted from the Bulletin of the Survey Vol. V. No. 2.
• Barrows, Walter R. and C. Hart Merriam. “The English Sparow (Passer Domesticus) in North America, Especially in its Relations to Agriculture.” United States Department of Agriculture Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy. Bulletin 1. Government Printing Office. 1889. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=ofwYAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA1&hl=en
• “Thomas Mayo Brewer.” Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, Vol. 5, No. 2 (APRIL, 1880). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24723261?seq=1
• Brewer, T.M. “The European House-Sparrow.” The Atlantic. May 1868. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1868/05/the-european-house-sparrow/628410/
• “Zoology.” The American Naturalist, Vol. 8, No. 9 (Sep., 1874), pp. 553-565. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2448426?seq=4
• “Zoology.” The American Naturalist, Vol. 8, No. 7 (Jul., 1874), pp. 425-441 (17 pages). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2447653?seq=12

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