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many other injurious animals. The good done by the Lapwing 

 cannot be overestimated : no one has said or can say a bad 

 word against it. In spite of this, people are allowed to collect 

 the eggs wholesale, and the demand increases, and, in conse- 

 quence, in many parts the bird is decreasing. With this decrease 

 goes a concomitant increase of wireworm and other grubs. 



Surely where, as in this case, we have a unanimous opinion, 

 the somewhat useless and seldom-enforced Wild Birds Protec- 

 tion Acts might be employed, so as to make it not only illegal to 

 take the eggs but to offer them for sale in shops. 



When we come to consider the Finches (Fringillidae), of 

 which twenty-nine are recorded as British, the matter becomes 

 simpler, for there is no doubt that when the common species 

 become very abundant they are destructive. Eleven of them 

 are very rare. Six or seven only can be looked upon as 

 harmful species. There is not the least doubt, nevertheless, 

 that all the Finches do some good, but it does not make up, it 

 appears, for the amount of loss they cause. Most authorities 

 agree that two are so pernicious that they must be destroyed, 

 namely, the House Sparrow and the Bullfinch. That Finches 

 do some good we are all bound to acknowledge, for they 

 mostly feed their nestlings on insect life. Much of that insect 

 life consists of injurious species, but by no means all, for lady- 

 bird larvae, etc., are also taken, so that the good the Finches 

 do by taking insects must to some extent be discounted. 

 Weed seeds are also greedily devoured, but many of these 

 are passed whole, so that the birds act as distributing agents. 

 The good then that such birds do is insignificant compared with 

 all the harm that is constantly being reported. 



The Sparrow {Passer dome sticus, Linn.), or Avian Rat as Mr. 

 Tegetmeier fitly describes it, was no doubt a feeder on wild 

 seeds, but as the Rev. H. Slater states, " it has now attached 

 itself to man, influenced by his untidiness and wastefulness, 

 until it has become the worst of all his pests." 



Whether man's untidiness had anything to do with the 

 matter may or may not be the case, but that it is one of 

 his worst pests in many parts of the world is only too well 

 known. Yet what trouble it took to introduce this bird into 

 America, and what would they now give to be free of it ! 

 Nevertheless, there are believers in the Sparrow, for Mr. J. P # 

 Nunn (4, p. 1) says: "There can be no doubt that the sparrow 



