I am going to ask bird-men to forgive me if I say that I believe, although I speak only from general impression, and not from careful research, that the sparrow within the past eight years has reached his equilibrium in the neighborhood of Philadelphia and is growing no more abundant. Meanwhile another and very desirable state of affairs is arising. Bird love and bird protection are so active in this neighborhood that there is growing to be a new race of birds who lack the fear of man their ancestors justly had. Under these conditions the wild birds, which for a while we believed to have been completely driven out by the sparrow, are rapidly returning to our villages and towns, and we have many more robins and catbirds, wrens and flickers than we had ten years ago. We have seen the worst of the English sparrow; he has now found his equilibrium. CHAPTER IV ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL Among the standard books of the classical curriculum in the denominational college of thirty years ago was a volume which I suppose has practically disappeared from such courses. It delighted many of its students for a reason entirely different from that which the author meant should be its taking feature. It was Paley's "Natural Theology." The author started with a story of a watch found by a savage. This child of nature was supposed to examine its mechanism and to infer that the watch was made for a definite purpose. As I remember, he was even supposed to discover that its purpose was to mark time. It was at least to become clear to his savage mind that this was no chance object, but was the definite product of a designing mind. Having brought this hypothetical savage to these conclusions, the author turned himself to savages nearer home who fail to see design in nature. The book takes up a great many cases of interesting facts in animals and plants as clearly showing evidences of design as did the watch our savage picked up. But the inference we were expected to draw was that the design shown in nature argued clearly for a Designer above nature; in other words, that nature was unintelligible without God. Everyone in the class believed in God without this preliminary, and consequently the book was unnecessary, so far as we were concerned. We started with the condition of mind which the author hoped to produce. One effect the book did have; in the absence of any other reputable course in zooelogy, it gave us an astonishing collection of interesting facts about animals. Some of Paley's statements were certainly peculiar. His Malay pig with its upper teeth wonderfully curved was said to be in the habit of hanging its head upon a bush while it slept, in order to save the strain upon its porcine neck. This was too much even for our credulity. None the less the impression made upon some of us by the evidence for design in nature has never left us.