THE SPARROW. 53 



the townsman in the morning, and cheered him as he took tea at the 

 open window in the evening, is now scarcely heard, a few young birds 

 of the new brood being all that are left to people the once populous 

 city in the ivy. The sparrow is never silent long, and so these few 

 keep up the sparrow piusic through the summer ; and to an ordinary 

 observer, who sees wings in motion in every garden, and hears the 

 unmistakeable sparrow chirp all day long, the houses seem by no 

 means deserted. But he would only need to watch them as they 

 come to roost, to note the comparison between the few that remain 

 and the crowds that haunted the same roosting grounds in spring. 



Towards September the numbers thicken, and when the last glean- 

 ing is carried from the harvest-field, those that remained with the 

 gleaners turn their faces to the town, and in a short time the gardens 

 and the eaves are crowded. The morning matins and the evening 

 vespers are as loud as ever, and there is something really cheering in 

 the confused chaos of voices, and the whirring of wings, and rustling 

 of feathers, which blends so harmoniously with the growth of the 

 morning daylight and the increase of the evening darkness. " Just 

 as the leaves begin to fall," says Rusticus, "the sparrows begin to 

 hold their ' evenings at home ; ' and strange evenings they are ; such 

 chattering and chirping ; such hopping up and down ; such changings 

 of places; such bickering and squabbling ; such fidgetting and wiig- 

 gling ; the row often lasting more than an hour, and^only ceasing when 

 they have chattered themselves to sleep." Towards winter, the spar- 

 row grows impudent, bold, and thievish. He will feed at your feet if 

 you give him encouragement, and may be tempted to the window- 

 ledge for crumbs, or into the room, even, with a little patience and 

 the absence of everything likely to threaten his safety. As soon as 

 Christmas is past, he looks out for the green sprigs of bulbous plants, 

 and nibbles do^vn the snow-drops and crocuses, and enlivens the dull 

 days of February and March with his incessant chatter and repeated 

 quarrels. Tt is not fair, however, to charge him with indiscriminate 

 destruction ; there are few garden plants for which he has any 

 regard, and the vast havoc he makes in the insect broods amply com- 

 pensate for the stealing of a little green meat for his young ones. 



But the sparrow has his enemies. He lives no life of uninterrupted 

 enjoyment. His acts of petty larcency bring upon him the vengeance 

 of the farmer, who sets a price upon his head, and thereby encourages 

 vagrancy and destructiveness in all the ragged urchins of a village. 



