THE SPARROW 3 ITS VIRTUES. 175 
he not, leaving England for a warmer country, 
depend more upon vegetable food and less upon 
animal? And are not both New Zealand and 
America, at any rate during the summer months, 
considerably warmer than our own country? 
To bring forward as evidence against the bird in 
England its evil doings in foreign countries into which 
man himself introduced it, and in which the natural 
conditions are widely different, implies so com- 
plete a lack of ordinary reasoning powers that it is 
really wonderful to find in how many cases testimony 
so utterly inconsequent is accepted as of direct and 
vital importance. Do we argue, because the Esqui- 
maux clothe themselves from head to foot in furs im 
their own inclement latitudes, that they would do the 
same were they to migrate to southern Europe ? 
Would any one be found to assert that savages who. 
can dispense with clothing beneath the burning sun 
of the equator could do the same in the bleak and: 
chilly lands of the far north? And food and cloth- 
ing, be it remembered, have this in common, that 
upon both depends the preservation of the bodily 
warmth. 
Yet, although we at once recognise the manifest 
absurdity of propositions such as these, we continue 
to bring forward the old false and ridiculous argu- 
ment, that a bird which lives wholly upon grain and 
fruit in one country must necessarily do the same 
in another the conditions of which are altogether 
different. The sparrow, as a British bird, and with 
reference to its influence upon British agriculture, 
N 
