birds eat in this country. I would, therefore, suggest the obvious propriety of finding out exactly, in the only proper and scientific way, instead of sawing the air any longer in such futile way. I suggest, that, at the height of the insect season, at the time when the sparrows should be eating the bugs if they ever do, in some places fairly infested with the bugs, a sufficient number of sparrows be killed and examined in respect to the contents of their crops. Let the authorities of any of our large cities, preferably Boston, where the birds are said to have done so much good, and where the sparrow combination talks loudest, furnish to proper persons, say five hundred sparrows, whose stomachs shall be examined by some competent botanist and entomologist together. If noxious insects should be found to form the greater portion, or even any considerable portion of the food of these birds, I would yield the case as far as this particular count is concerned. At present I continue to believe that the scraping and other occupation of the city-forestering Othellos is not gone.

As to my recommendations: I am often asked, “Would you then have sparrows exterminated?" While I am not prepared to advise such an extreme measure as this, I do not hesitate to declare that prompt and stringent measures should be taken, as a matter of national economy, to check the increase of the birds. We have enough already. Without unnecessary cruelty, the numbers might be kept down, if not diminished, by the following gradually and continuously operating means:

I. Let the birds shift for themselves; turn them loose and put them on the same footing as other birds. That is, take down the boxes and all the special contrivances for sheltering and petting the birds; stop feeding them; stop supplying them with building materials; let them take care of themselves.

II. Abolish the legal penalties for killing them. The birds are now under the arm of the law, which protects them from most of the natural vicissitudes of bird-life. Let the boys kill them if they wish; or let them be trapped and used as pigeons or glass balls are now used, in shooting matches among sportsmen. Vast numbers of pigeons are destroyed in this way; there are even "sparrow-clubs" in various cities, which make a business of practicing on various of our small birds, for which the European sparrows would be an admirable substitute, answering all the conditions these marksmen could desire. In this way the birds

might even be made a source of some little revenue, instead of a burden and a pest; they are to be had in practically unlimited numbers, and could be sold by the city to 'such persons as might desire to use them for sporting purposes.

The present article is to be regarded as a mere outline of the important subject. I have collected a voluminous mass of testimony during the past two or three years, which I intend to digest, in order to place the whole matter in its true light on permanent record, in treating of the species in the "Birds of the Colorado Valley." For the plague has spread even to that

remote portion of our much be-sparrowed country.

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WALKS ROUND SAN FRANCISCO-THE BAY SHORE.

BY W. N. LOCKINGTON.

WOUTH of the city, on the shore of the bay, lies Mission creek,

SOUTH

once no doubt as attractive a spot as any to be found in the neighborhood, but now converted into an exceedingly mal-odorous mud-flat, the recipient of the refuse of factories and of the drainage of the city. Right across the mouth of this creek, or rather bay, the Southern Pacific railroad has constructed a broad mole of earthwork, leaving no entrance save a narrow channel crossed by a drawbridge, over which runs the road leading to the part of the bay shore we have chosen for our excursion. Crossing the Potrero peninsula by a deep cut through the hill, we emerge upon the trestle-work spanning Islay creek, and after running the gauntlet of the powerful scents of Butcher-town, are at last deposited on the slope of the hill behind South San Francisco.

In front of us the San Bruno mountains stretch in a dark green line from bay to ocean; on our right runs a range of low hills, over whose tops the city is slowly advancing, throwing out the sentinels of scattered houses, and to our left spreads out its glorious Bay of San Francisco, glowing under the summer sun. The bay is broad here, and the coast range of Alameda county looks very distant and misty. Far away to the south, beyond the San Bruno hills, beyond the long stretch of lowland, backed by tree-clothed heights that lie behind them, till the shores grow indistinct with the distance, we can see the outline of this inland sea (for such it is), the shores drawing closer and closer as

they recede. In the far distance a thin line of smoke marks the position of a steamer en route to or from San José.

The shore of the bay in our vicinity is much indented by rocky peninsulas alternating with valleys, the outlets of which are filled either with a marsh or a lagoon, produced by the little streams that find their way from among the round-topped hills. Hunter's point, which is in our rear soon after we leave the cars, runs out into the bay two or three miles, then follows a marshy tract on which are placed the butts of a rifle company, then an isolated mound rising close to the edge of the bay, then a valley with a lagoon, and south of this, a lofty hill with serrated outline terminating baywards in a precipitous promontory, with a needlerock as an outlier. This lagoon, the serrated hill and the beach around it are our hunting-ground to-day. We are armed with a spade and intend to dig for clams. Luckily it is low tide, a large area of silt is uncovered in front of the lagoon, and we hasten onwards to try our chances. Not that there is much risk of missing the clams when they spout beneath the feet at every step, and when every spadeful throws up at least two or three. The most abundant clam at this spot is the ubiquitous Mya arenaria, which also has possession of the entire beach near Oakland, on the Alameda county side of the bay; but the native Californian Schizotherus nuttallii, a monster of a clam when full grown, reaching a length of about seven inches, is also found here deep in the mud. Its ugly black siphon is as thick as a finger, and its gaping shell is clothed with a black epidermis. Along with the Mya a few individuals of the cockle, Cardium corbis, and of the Tellinoid clam, Macoma nasuta, are occasionally turned out by our unceremonious spade. Here is a large round burrow, with the sides as smooth as if plastered. This we know to be the dwelling-place of one of those fossorial cray-fish of which some four or five species occur along the Pacific coast, and we dig on, hoping to find a Callianassa, a genus that we are assured is found in the bay, but which we have never been so fortunate as to procure there, though we have found it in abundance at Tomales, some fifty miles to the northward. Out he comes at last, a fellow about six inches long, with a hairy rostrum and two pincers of equal size, swimming away for dear life. It is only Gebia pugettensis Dana, the commonest of common species. Whether living in the mud, in the sand, among stones, it is all the same to G. pugettensis. The dredging machines

in the entrance of Oakland harbor brought it up in abundance, and the deep-water specimens appeared to be larger than those found above low tide level. Attached to the swimmerets of Gebia, in the spring months, will usually be found a parasitic isopodous crustacean, Phyllodurus abdominalis St., an odd-looking creature, the two sexes of which differ a good deal in form. I have never found more than two upon a single Gebia, and these two are usually male and female, sometimes there is a female alone, but as the male is smaller and blessed with greater locomotive powers, he may in those cases have been overlooked or have escaped. The female is literally nearly as broad as she is long, with seven little pairs of legs ending in hooked claws tucked under her lobsided body. The male is long and slender, symmetrical, with the segments of the body well separated, and is very much smaller than his unwieldy spouse.

Very often a small bivalve mollusc, Pythina rugifera Carpenter, is attached to one of the swimmerets of the larger Gebias. A large Nereis, about twelve inches long, gay with iridescent tints when placed in clear sea-water, completes the list of the siltinhabiting creatures at this spot. All the cockles found are very small, yet shells of the species three inches across lie upon the beach, and at times the Chinese colony located near the lagoon is in possession of many a sackful of large individuals. An "old inhabitant" who has been clam-digging, volunteers an explanation of this. The bed of these cockles, he says, is below low water, and they are only washed ashore after a storm. "It puzzled him somewhat" at first, to find out where they came from.

A little farther on, as we leave the lagoon, the banks gradually rise into precipices, the beach is strewn with loose rocks, with here and there a larger boulder rising high among its fellows. We over turn a number of the smaller rocks, thinking it possible that we may find beneath them the large red Cancer productus, which is common enough in the bay, and which we have found in abundance at this season, in similar situations in Tomales bay. But either we are a little too early in the season to catch them so high out of the water, or they do not, in this locality, venture beyond low-water mark. Certain it is that we have not found them alive, with the exception of a straggler or two on the beach near San Francisco. But if, in July, we return to this spot, we shall find beneath many of these stones, each in a little puddle of

Sca-water, many individuals of a singular fish belonging to the family Batrachidæ or toad-fishes. If we attempt to catch it, it will salute us, if we are not careful, by thrusting into our hands the sharp spines with which its gill-covers are armed, at the same time emitting a most characteristic grunt, which though not very loud is rather alarming to one unacquainted with the fish, and usually causes him, in conjunction with the wound from the spines, to drop it instanter. A glance at the under side of the rock which once roofed in her abode, will show us, covered as it is with ova about the size of a pea, that she comes to the shore to spawn. This fish, Porichthys notatus as it was named by Girard, is sufficiently ugly when looked at above, but its under side sparkles with rows of shining pores, emitting the mucus which covers its body and renders it as slippery as an eel.

Under every loose rock we turn over there is a colony of a pale greenish little crab, with a square carapax and whitish pincers which are uplifted menacingly at the unwelcome intruders as their owners scuttle off to hide themselves under the nearest shelter. This species, Heterograpsus oregonensis Dana, is commonest at this point, but it is often accompanied by the almost equally common and much prettier Heterograpsus nudus Dana, which attains larger dimensions, and has a carapax and legs beautifully marbled with red and purple brown. The first species is extremely abundant in the brackish creeks which permeate the marshes round the bay.

In the crevices of the larger rocks, up to quite high-water mark, another square crab, dark-green in color, and with the last joints of its four pairs of walking feet armed with spinules, by which it holds tightly to the slippery surface, may be found in considerable numbers, but it is rather difficult to secure entire, not only from the difficulty of reaching it in its hiding places, but from the extreme readiness with which it throws off some of its limbs when escape proves impossible. This is Pachygrapsus crassipes Randall. Farther on still, where the loose rocks are larger, the large Cancer magister Dana, the species usually eaten by the practical carcinologists of San Francisco, is occasionally found, having presumably retired from the deeper water to shed his plate-armor in peace. But it is too early in the season for him, and we encounter nothing new until, between two rocks, we see an eightarmed object crawling along, the arms united by a membrane, so