THE HOUSE SPARROW. 75 



Many and bitter have been the controversies which have taken place on 

 the merits and demerits of our present subject. Most writers adopting extreme 

 views; some contending for his total extirpation, and others advocating his 

 protection, and to this we incline. From my own observation there has been 

 a considerable decrease in some of the feathered tribes of late years, from 

 some unknown cause. It would be well for the husbandman to spare but a 

 little food to preserve their lives through the inclement winter, and he will 

 be amply repaid by the protection of his crops from the ravages of insects 

 when spring advances. Laws might be enacted for the protection of birds, 

 but universal opinion would act better than any law. In South America we 

 are informed that the Sparrows were persecuted with such unremitting perse- 

 verance, that insects increased to such a degree, that many cultivated lands were 

 so ravaged by them, that it became quite impossible to raise any crops upon 

 them. It is not only in America that a price has been set upon the poor 

 Sparrow's head, for our own enlightened country is, and has been guilty of 

 such wholesale murder from time immemorial to the present hour. We wish it 

 otherwise; however, we hope the day is not far distant when parish subscrip- 

 tions for the destruction of Sparrows will be discontinued; for such 'Societies!' 

 or whatever their local name may be, only point out the ignorance of their 

 members, for that portion of grain or fruit taken from them was intended by 

 the Great Creator of All for the birds for the benefits they confer upon man, 

 that selfish biped who considers himself 'lord of the creation;' but let him 

 remember in his ignorance that for all his misdeeds he will one day have to 

 answer. 



"For uot a Sparrow 'twill be found, 

 Without His will falls to the ground, 

 "Who high above reigns o'er us." 



That the Sparrows do eat grain, and at times to a considerable extent, no 

 true naturalist will deny; but we never, as yet, have heard of a farmer or 

 gardener being ruined by them, as some of their enemies have almost asserted; 

 but it is well known that whole fields of grass and grain have been destroyed 

 by one single species of insect, and that farmers have lost hundreds of pounds 

 by them in a season. That the Sparrows are the wholesale destroyers of our 

 crops, that some writers represent them to be, is not correct. Let such 

 watch them during the period of incubation, when they are most voracious, 

 and no better locality for such can be selected than a farm-steading or fiirm- 

 yard, surrounded with hedge-rows, stretching away towards a wood, etc. The 

 Sparrow will be seen to fly out of its nest with a rapid and bounding 

 flight, and after scouring the hedges, he returns with a caterpillar or some 

 other insect-enemy in his bill, and is welcomed home with a chorus of sweet 

 chirpings, and so on for many a long hour in the bright days of spring and 

 summer, when there is not an atom of grain for him, watching over the wants 

 and comforts of his offspring till they are able to fly and provide for themselves, 

 with a zeal and affection that would put many a christian to the blush. 



