NOTES ON THE TREE SPARROW. 163 



did see them our mind was musing on these most true lines of the great 



Schiller.— 



"On the mountain is Freedom! the breath of decay 

 Never sullies the fresh flowing air; 

 Oh! Nature is perfect wherever we stray; 

 'Tis man that deforms it with care." 



Greenbrae Cottage, Dumfries, April, 1853. 



NOTES ON THE TREE SPARROW, {PASSER MONTANUS,) 

 WITH A FEW REMARKS UPON SPARROW CLUBS. 



BY STEPHEN STONE, ESQ. 



A COLONY of Tree Sparrows has been established at Standlake, Oxfordshire, 

 for many years, and so numerous have the pairs of birds composing it become, 

 that I have known of twenty. nests in a season, within the range of a shot 

 from an ordinary rifle. 



As a good deal has been said and written about the different situations 

 chosen by these birds, for building their nests, in different parts of the country, 

 I may perhaps be excused if I record here the situations of these twenty 

 nests. One, then, was placed in a stack of faggot-wood, about three feet 

 from the ground; one in the hole of a decayed limb of a maiden elm; six, 

 in holes, in the head of pollard trees — two of the ash, and four of the 

 willow; and the remaining twelve in holes of decayed apple trees, in orchards. 



They seem to adopt precisely the same rule in nest-building as that adopted 

 by their near relatives, the House Sparrows, which is to adapt, in the most 

 admirable manner, the shape and substance of their nests to the situations in 

 which they are placed. Thus, if much exposed to the weather, the nest is 

 composed of a vast quantity of materials, is profusely lined with feathers, and 

 completely domed over; a small aperture only being left for 



"Their exits and their entrances/' 



If less exposed, a smaller quantity of materials is employed, the lining is more 

 scant, and it is only partially domed over. While in a very snug and sheltered 

 situation, the materials are more scanty still, and the dome is entirely dispensed 

 with. 



Thus here, as in innumerable other instances amongst the feathered tribes, 

 an amount of intelligence and discrimination is displayed, little, if at all, 

 inferior to that possessed by man, with all his boasted wisdom. 



As far as my experience has hitherto gone, no bird can be more constant 

 in the number of eggs it produces than is the Tree Sparrow; for in the many 

 dozens of nests, containing their full complement of eggs which I have examined, 

 the number has invariably been five. There was a peculiarity too, in reference 

 to those eggs so constant, that I cannot pass it over unnoticed, which was 

 this: — that although no two sets of them were exactly alike; yet each set. 



