“A large number of German sparrows, have been imported and placed in the vineyards in the vicinity of Davenport, Iowa.” So the newspapers inform us--the object, we presume, being the destruction of caterpillars. We fear, however, that the grape growers there have made a capital mistake, and are likely to have an easy time annually hereafter, when gathering the vintage. It has been customary to charge the bees with damaging the grape crop, but it appears that in Germany this sparrow is the real offender. The Rev. Mr. Stern, an aged and well known bee-keeper, residing at Wessenburg in Lower Austria, writing to the Bienenzeitung about this alleged malfeasance of the bees, says--“I have lived more than thirty years in a village of three thousand inhabitants, most of whom derive their support from grape culture. Besides their vineyards, they have numerous trellises of vines at their houses, and there are several apiaries in the village. I have myself an arbor of vines, 180 feet in length, within twenty-five feet of my apiary. Now it has happened for many years that I did not get a single bunch of grapes, undamaged, from any vine in this arbor, and the other grape-growers in my neighborhood fared no better. Berries torn open were annually to be seen, and I have seen bees on _such_ berries often--not indeed by ‘myriads’ nor yet by thousands, or hundreds, nor even by fifties, but only here and there a solitary one quietly sipping of the extruding juice. I have killed hundreds of _hornets_ in the act of tearing open the berries, and thousands of wasps busy at the same work; but _I have never seen a bee so engaged_. But, what flies and bees are wholly incapable of doing, and what wasps and hornets do only in part and occasionally, _is really the work of the_ SPARROW, which, because its habits have been little observed or studied, continues to be held in high estimation in some districts. Even a small number of these birds can, in a few days, do exceedingly great injury in a vineyard, at the time when the ripening grapes are becoming mellow. They then peck open berry after berry, as though in sport, sip a little of the juice occasionally, and flitting away to some other cluster incessantly repeat the damaging process. I have witnessed this hundreds of times; and seen them do the work so effectually that, year after year, I have not obtained one undamaged cluster from my arbor.--This cunning sparrow knows, too, how to avoid traps and springes, and soon familiarizes himself with the most elaborate fantastic scarecrow set up _in terrorem_, acting apparently in derision and contempt of the baffled and mortified grape-grower.” Forty years ago, an American ornithologist, speaking of this species of sparrow and the injury done by it to grain fields in Europe, said--“_Fortunately we are free from this pest on this side of the Atlantic._” Now we import them, and boast of it! * * * * * CORRESPONDENCE OF THE BEE JOURNAL.