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Second Council Meet..........( )

[[underline]] Dr. Dearborn [[/underline]]:  The last week has been spent with the English sparrow traps and in beginning a revision of Farmers' Bulletin 383; in looking over the Bulletin to see what progress we have made since it was published in January, 1910, and where additions would be likely to be made, I found a few places that would need to be amended and added to.
     In reference to the sparrow's good work with the weevils in Utah, it seems to me that it was to be anticipated under the circumstances.  It strikes me as being an exceptional case, and merely illustrates what the sparrows will do when coincidents come right.  Mr. Kalmbach stated that there were more sparrows in the field where the alfalfa weevil was then there were in town, and that roofs of the farm buildings were thatched, which made ideal nesting conditions for the sparrow in the particular place where the alfalfa weevil subsequently appeared.  The conditions were exceptional.  The sparrows in town will not do much for the alfalfa weevil, and the coincidence of the sparrows and weevil being on the ground at the same time is not to be reckoned ^[[much]] in the sparrow's favor.  It does not save sparrows in general from the condemnation they generally deserve.
     The new trap of course will lengthen out the section in the bulletin relating to trapping quite materially.  We have gotten the following results with the 2 new traps.  They have been put out 6 days.  Some days one would catch sparrows and the other would not.  Only one day, and [[insert]] ^that [[/insert]] was cold and wintry, we failed to catch sparrows altogether.  The advantage is with the larger trap, although yesterday the smaller trap caught twice as many as the larger one.  During the 6 days we have caught exactly 50 sparrows, the largest number in one day being 12 with the large trap.
     Last year [[strikethrough]] s [[/strikethrough]] in keeping sparrows in captivity, I was unsuccessful in an attempt to fatten them, and for awhile could not get them to hold their own.  I found that by giving them a variety of food, different grains and bread, that I could keep them normal, but their weight was not increased.  The amount of food they are capable of eating comes to about a quart of grain a day for 50 sparrows, so one can easily figure out how much damage a flock of 50 or 100 sparrows would do around a grain field.  Two dozen of them would take care of a pint of grain a day.  This is data which I had not gotten before, and do not know if anybody else has.

[[underline]] Mr. Henshaw [[/underline]]:  That is an important feature to be put in the bulletin.

[[underline]] Dr. Dearborn [[/underline]]: I tried very hard last spring to get some sort of trap that would catch sparrows as they came to build their nests, that is, a nest trap, but I failed to trap them automatically.  I made at least three different styles of automatic traps and a number of traps that were not made to work automatically but that could be