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The Conversation USA

Victorian efforts to export animals to new worlds failed, mostly

  • Written by Harriet Ritvo, Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A murmuration of starlings over West Pier in Brighton England. Lois GoBe/Shutterstock.com

In 1890, a New York bird enthusiast released several dozen starlings in Central Park. No one knows for sure why Eugene Schieffelin set the birds aloft, but he may have been motivated by a sentimental desire to make the American Northeast more like the English...

Read more: Victorian efforts to export animals to new worlds failed, mostly

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