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THE FIELD SPARROW AND THE CHIPPER 
Aut beginners in bird study find the sparrow 
family a hard one. There are so many kinds 
of sparrows, and the different kinds look so con- 
fusingly alike. How shall I ever be able to tell 
them apart ? the novice says to himself. 
Well, there is no royal road to such learning, 
it may as well be confessed. But there is a road, 
for all that, and a pretty good one, — the road 
of patience ; and there is much pleasure to be 
had in following it. If you know one sparrow, 
be it only the so-called “ English,” you have 
made a beginning. 
If you know the English sparrow, I say ; for, 
strange as it may seem, | find numbers of peo- 
ple who do not. Take the average inhabitant 
of any of our large cities into the country, and 
let him come upon an English sparrow in a way- 
side hedge, and there are three chances to one 
that he will not know with certainty what to 
eall it. Quite as likely as not he has never 
noticed that there are two kinds of English spar- 
