The Sparrow Question: Social and Scientific Accord in Britain, 1850-1900.

During the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the utility of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) to humankind was a contentious topic. In Britain, numerous actors from various backgrounds including natural history, acclimatisation, agriculture and economic ornithology converged on the bird, as contemporaries sought to calculate its economic cost and benefit to growers. Periodicals and newspapers provided an accessible and anonymous means of expression, through which the debate raged for over 50 years. By the end of the century, sparrows had been cast as detrimental to agriculture. Yet consensus was not achieved through new scientific methods, instruments, or changes in practice. This study instead argues that the rise and fall of scientific disciplines and movements paved the way for consensus on "the sparrow question." The decline of natural history and acclimatisation stifled a raging debate, while the rising science of economic ornithology sought to align itself with agricultural interests: the latter overwhelmingly hostile to sparrows

The transatlantic Thames: Anglo-American tensions on the Victorian “stream of pleasure”

While it is widely understood that rivers took on new symbolic power as avatars of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, less examined is their use as a space for Transatlantic cultural flow, and transnational commentary and critique. This article explores the ways in which a variety of Americans abroad in this period centred the Thames – newly charged with nationalist sentiment – in their accounts of Britain. In particular, it analyses Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennell’s travel narrative The Stream of Pleasure, first published as the lead article in the ‘Midsummer Holiday Issue’ of The Century Magazine in 1889, as an exemplary text in which both artist and writer play with the image of the river in ways that chime with much wider Transatlantic debates at this moment

The Use of Linked Activity Schedules to Teach Children with Autism to Play Hide and Seek

Linked activity schedules were used to establish appropriate game play in children with autism during a game of hide-and-seek. All 6 participants demonstrated acquisition of appropriate play skills in the presence of the activity schedules and maintained responding during subsequent phases. When the schedules were removed, responding decreased to baseline levels, demonstrating that the schedules controlled responding. Implications for future research on the use of activity schedules to teach social behavior are discussed