As evidence in support of natural selection, Bumpus presented
measurements on house sparrows brought to the Anatomical Laboratory of
Brown University after an uncommonly severe winter storm. Some of
these birds had survived and some had perished. Bumpus asked whether
those that perished did so because they lacked physical
characteristics enabling them to withstand the intensity of that
particular instance of selective elimination. The data are on the
the weights, in grams, for the 24 adult male sparrows that perished and
for the 35 adult males that survived.