THE SPARROW; ITS VIRTUES. 163 
year were they not prevented from attaining to 
their perfect state, and making provision for a future 
generation. And, again, that their abundance in the 
third, fourth, and fifth years would increase, not 
merely by leaps and bounds, but by a sort of arith- 
metical progression, rendering them, before five sum- 
mers had passed away, so great and terrible a scourge, 
that England would be as wholly devastated by their 
ravages as was Egypt of old by the plague of locusts. 
Imagine the face of the country without a vestige of 
verdure ; no crops in the fields ; no foliage upon the 
trees ; everywhere utter and complete desolation, with 
nothing to conceal the bare earth from view, save the 
hordes of writhing, creeping creatures by whose 
agency the work of destruction had been brought 
about. And that is a picture, by no means over- 
drawn, of the extent to which insects would increase 
were they not kept down by such birds as the spar- 
row, and of the results which would necessarily ensue 
from their unrestrained depredations. 
Nor is this all that can be said in favour of the 
sparrow as a destroyer of insects, for, notwithstanding 
the assertion of a contemporary writer to the contrary, 
the bird kills numbers of insects at almost all seasons 
of the year, and kills them, moreover, for its own con- 
sumption. Indeed, when grain is not to be procured, 
the bird is an insect-killer by sheer necessity, and 
perforce devours numbers of highly-mischievous crea- 
tures. It would greatly prefer corn, no doubt ; but 
corn it cannot procure, and so Is literally driven toa 
diet of a more useful character. 
