PARROWS," said the Colonel, "may be very upright, respectable, middle-class birds long as they slay in England, but when they emigrate to America, they are no better than the average of our working classes. Some meddling idiot brought a lot of sparrows to the States ten or fifteen years ago, expecting they would kill all the worms on the fruit trees. They hadn't been in the country above six months when they took the ground that they were as good as the best of our swell birds, and that they considered that killing worms was a degrading kind of labour fit only for blackbirds and crows. So they took to living on wheat, and strawberries, and cherries, and they multiplied so fast that they are the worst curse that the farmer and the fruit grower ever had, with the solitary exception of the McKinley tariff. That shows the folly of promoting emigration among birds, just as the exportation of rabbits lo Australia showed the folly of supposing that man knows more about the proper distribution of animals than Nature knows. There are now about ten sparrows to every worm in the United Stales, and what we need more than anything else is some style of worm big enough to cat the sparrows.
"Professor Van Wagener and I were discussing the sparrow question one day, and I was complaining of the inefficiency of the American cat. Our cats are about as wide-awake as any monarchical cats that you can produce, but they can't catch a single sparrow. I've known ambitious cats who set out to catch sparrows, and who wasted away to mere skeletons, and died of weakness, through watching for sparrows from dawn to darkness, and never once getting within ten feet of one. As a general rule I don't have much sympathy with cats, but the insulting language that sparrows use when they see a cat laying for them, and the aggravating way in which they will fly just over the cat's head, or maybe hit the cat over the tail with their wings, is more than any cat can be expected to bear.
" 'The trouble is,' said Van Wagener, 'that the cat isn't a flying animal and the sparrow is. The sparrow's native element is the air, and you can't expect a cat to catch a sparrow so long as the cat can't fly.'
" 'That's true enough,' said I, 'but it don't help us out of our difficulty. Cats weren't made with wings, and neither you nor I can invent a new model of cat that will he able to fly, and to catch sparrows on the wing.'
" 'Don't you be too sure of that,' said the Professor. 'Science has improved
everything that it has put its hand to, and I sec no reason why science shouldn't improve cats. A flying cat would supply a great public want, for she would kill off the sparrows as easily as she kills off the mice. I've half a mind to try the experiment of inventing a flying cat.'
" 'All right," said I, 'When you get your flying cat finished just notify me
and I'll come and see her fly. Then, if you are going in for improving animals, perhaps you will invent a cat that can sing like a nightingale. The present style of singing among cats is disgraceful. They haven't any more idea of music than a Chinaman.'
" 'You only show your ignorance, Colonel,' said Van Wagener, 'when you ridicule science. Give me six weeks, and I promise to show you a flying cat. I don't say positively that the flying cat will exterminate all the sparrows, for that would be a pretty large order; but I do say that she will fly, and that she will give the sparrows the worst scare that they have ever had.'
"Well, the Professor buckled down to business, and from his daily interviews with his private cat, and the consequent scratches that diversified his good old scientific countenance, I judged that he was doing his best to make a cat that would fly. Before the six weeks were up he sent me a note, inviting me to come round to his house at two o'clock the next afternoon to see the first successful flying cat that had ever been invented. I needn't say that I went. I had assisted at the birth of dozens of Van Wagener's inventions, and I had generally found that the presence of a man with experience in the treatment of accidents was a handy thing, so far as the Professor was concerned.
"I found Van Wagener sitting in his library with the most discouraged-looking cat that I had ever seen. As soon as he had shaken hands with me he launched out into a description of his new invention.