FRINGILLID#. 187 
besides the consumption of various sorts of grain, 
which they devour in the rick-yard when they can 
get it (always preferring a wheat to a barley rick), 
and in the field, occasional inroads on green peas 
and various sorts of garden-seeds in the kitchen- 
garden, and in the flower-garden on crocuses, of 
which they are said to be great destroyers: I have 
never myself observed this particular piece of 
destructiveness. 
The nest of the House Sparrow is placed in a 
variety of situations: in holes in walls; under the 
roofs and thatch of old buildings; in the tops of . 
water-pipes, which are often completely stopped up 
in consequence ; in ornamental curved friezes and 
coignes; it is occasionally also built in trees, in 
which situation it is always a large, untidy, clumsy- 
looking structure: it is, however, very warm within, 
being lined with a great quantity of feathers, and 
covered over, or “domed,” as it is called: outwards 
it is made of hay, straw, roots, shreds of cloth, and 
nearly anything that comes handy and can be turned 
to account. 
The House Sparrow is so common and well-known 
that any description is almost superfluous, except to 
distinguish it from the Tree Sparrow, and to show 
that itis not quite what I once heard all our British 
birds called, “dull little brown things, with no 
variety of colour.” In the male, then, the beak is 
bluish lead-colour ; irides hazel; top of the head ash- 
