- PERCHING BIRDS. 105 
and barren moorlands, wherever there is a human habi- 
tation, however humble, all are the same to him, for he 
is always at home. Everywhere he is the same fearless, 
independent bird; but the town sparrow is a much 
‘more pert little fellow than his brother of the country, 
and of the former elass the London bird is the beau 
ideal—he seems to have borrowed all the forwardness 
and impudence of the London gamin, and as for fear 
or timidity, it has no place in his disposition. But it is 
with country sparrows that we have now to do; and 
though they are rather more unsophisticated than those 
inhabiting our towns, they are still a fearless tribe, 
and very amusing with their consequential and impu- 
dent airs. 
But notwithstanding all that can be alleged against 
them, they are eminently serviceable to man, and cer- 
tainly do not deserve the indiscriminate attacks which 
are made upon them. I believe the benefits they confer 
in the destruction of caterpillars and other insects 
injurious to our various crops, outweigh tenfold their 
consumption of corn and seeds, and I have found them 
most valuable assistants in the garden in clearing my 
gooseberry and currant trees of caterpillars ; one pair of 
sparrows, during the season of feeding their young ones, 
will kill in a week more than 3000 caterpillars. I am 
convinced that the sparrow suffers unjustly from the 
many accusations brought against him by those who 
have not closely watched him feeding from one year’s 
end to the other, but have formed their judgment from 
seeing, perchance, a flock revelling on the corn where 
laid by the wind, or even on the gathered sheaves. 
Such an opinion I met with a little while since in the 
Essex Herald, in which the writer, after stating that 
