BACK STORY - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 18

monograph to it (Barrow, 1889; Moulton et al ., 2010 ). By 1928, a Department of
Agriculture survey of introduced birds made the same point by opposite means,
explaining the brevity of its entry on the species on the grounds that it 'receives
such frequent comment that it requires no more than passing notice here' (Phillips,
1928: 49). It remains one of the commonest birds in North America, though its
populations have recently suffered precipitous declines elsewhere in the world.
The sparrow's adaptation to North America may have been a triumph from
the passerine point of view, but hominids soon came to a different conclusion.
Although the first introduction was at mid-century, the most celebrated one
occurred a decade and a half later. The New York Times chronicled the evolving
opinions inspired by the new immigrants. In November 1868, it celebrated the
'wonderfully rapid increase in the number of sparrows which were imported from
England a year or so ago'; they had done 'noble work' by eating the inchworms
that infested the city's parks, described by the Times as 'the intolerable plague or
numberless myriads of that most disgusting shiver-producing, cold-chills-down-
your-back-generating, filthy and noisome of all crawling things'. The reporter
praised the kindness of children who fed the sparrows and that of adults who
subscribed to a fund that provided birdhouses for 'young married couples'; he
promised that, if they continued to thrive and devour, English sparrows would be
claimed as 'thoroughly naturalized citizens' (Anon, 1868: 8).
Two years later, sympathy was still strong, at least in some quarters. For example,
the author of an anonymous letter to the editor of the Times criticized his fellow
citizens in general, and Henry Bergh, the founder of the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in particular, for failing to provide thirsty
sparrows with water. Bergh took the allegation seriously enough to compose an
immediate reply, pointing out that despite his 'profound interest . . . in all that
relates to the sufferings of the brute creation—great and small,' neither he nor his
society had authority to erect fountains in public parks (Anon, 1870a: 2; Bergh,
1870: 3). But the tide was already turning. Only a few months later the Times
published an article entitled, 'Our Sparrows. What They Were Engaged to Do and
How They Have Performed Their Work. How They Increase and Multiply—Do
They Starve Our Native Song-Birds, and Must We Convert Them into Pot-Pies?'
(Anon, 1870b: 6).
While the English sparrow was making itself at home in New York and
adjoining territories, another creature was having a very different immigrant
experience far to the southwest. In the early 1850s, after the American annexation
of what became Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, the U.S. Army
found that patrolling the vast empty territory along the Mexican frontier was a
daunting task, especially in the overwhelming absence of roads. The horses and
mules that normally hauled soldiers and their gear did not function efficiently in
this harsh new environment. Of course, though the challenges of the desert
environment were new to the U.S. Army, they were not absolutely new. The
soldiers and merchants of North Africa and the Middle East had solved a similar
problem centuries earlier, and some open-minded Americans were aware of this