THE SPAPtEOW. 



We confess to a great partiality for the sparrow. There is something 

 hearty in his impudence (London hoys call him " cheeky") — some- 

 thing funny in his domestic habit, and in his love very much of the 

 heroic. Our partiality, though, has^ deeper source than the superficial 

 traits of sparrow-life, and springs from the constancy of the span-ow 

 as an associate of man everywhere. He is the last representative of 

 bird-life left to the smoke-dried citizen, just as the grass is the last 

 relic of vegetable life which still clings to bim. The sparrow will 

 make itself a home in the most sooty covert under grim tiles, and 

 between the blackened chinks in chimneys and waterspouts ; and the 

 grass will spring up between the flags in the closest court or alley, or 

 on the most barren heap of rubbish in a dirty corner. This proximity 

 to us, however, is fatal to the sparrow as an object of study, and when 

 an amateur ornithologist commences the formation of a museum, the 

 sparrow is the last specimen that finds a home there. We watch our 

 human neighbours too closely, and very often allow slander to supply 

 what ignorance sulfers to escape : but our out-door neighbours, the 

 sparrows, are, from their very neighbour-like qualities, overlooked, 

 and substituted in the attention by things more rare. We shall 

 therefore recount the history of the sparrow, and say a few words on 

 his character as a social being, hoping thereby " to point a moral and 

 adorn a tale." 



The house-sparrow {Fringilla Domestica) belongs to the most in- 

 teresting of the bird families, being a member of the Fringillidcc, or 

 the Finches, which includes most of the birds of song, and those im- 

 mediately interesting in their association with man. Spread pretty 

 equally over Europe and the north of Africa, on the plains of India, 

 and in the passes of the Himalaya, he is everywhere the companion 

 of man, and is the only bird whose habit it is to be at every season in 

 close attendance on human dwellings. Considered as an individual, 

 the sparrow exhibits a remarkable mixture of opposite qualities. 

 When made to pass through the sanitary processes which a city 



