it) 



but, it is one of those passages, whicli I am more impressed with than those 

 of later authors, " This bird, as seen in large and smoky towns, is generally 

 sooty and unpleasing in its appearance ; but among barns and stackyards 

 the cock bird exhibits a very great variety of his plumage, and is far from 

 being the least beautiful of our British birds." 



Whenever I exhibit the lovely skins of the common house sparrow to 

 those who never had the bird in their hands before, the exclamations of 

 admiration and surprise are carious to relate ; is it a thrush, a redwing, 

 a chaffinch, a brambling, and some have gone so far as to ask if it is a 

 goldfinch, a clean country sparrow puzzles many, however familiar they 

 are with the dirty groping street bird, who cocks his eye up sideways, 

 draws your attention, and seizing the crumbs from your feet, flies off, 

 returning with all the impertinence in the world for the next. They will 

 even go so far as to have a tremendous family quarrel and flog their lady 

 friends under one's nose, be it summer or in the depth of winter. I have 

 witnessed this quarrel when the snow was three inches deep, and they 

 (four in number) appeared more like young rats fighting for the last crust 

 than birds, the snow flying in all directions. 



It would be almost impossible to form an adequate estimate of the 

 literature on the sparrow, both for and against its habits : — In Griffith's 

 edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, I find an excellent calculation regard- 

 ing the quantity of corn consumed by this bird ; it is as follows — " Rougier 

 de la Bergerie, a French writer on rural economy, has made an approximative 

 calculation of what the sparrows cost, annually, to France. If their number 

 be reduced merely to ten millions, a reduction much below the reality, it 

 follows, that each of them eating a bushel of grain, weighing twenty pounds, 

 ten millions of bushels will thus be withdrawn from the consumption and 

 commerce of men ; and, only reckoning the price of a bushel to be twenty 

 sous, no less a sum than ten millions of francs per annum, will be withdrawn 

 from agricultural produce. This calculation of an able agriculturist is con- 

 firmed by observation. The quantity of grain eaten by these birds, may be 

 easily ascertained by those who bring them up in cages ; and M. Sonnini, 

 from whom we borrow these observations, says, that he found two-and 

 twenty grains of wheat in the stomach of a sparrow just killed." 



