THE SPARROW; ITS VIRTUES. 179 
minute seeds which no eyes less keen than theirs 
would be able to detect. 
The case against and for the sparrow, therefore, 
stands as follows :— 
On the one hand, the bird annually devours a 
large quantity of grain, destroys a certain amount of 
thatch, ejects sundry martins from their homes, 
sending them “to fresh fields and pastures new,” 
and is mischievous, to a small degree, in the flower 
and the kitchen gardens. 
That is the case for the prosecution. 
On the other hand, each pair of birds kill, during 
the breeding season, more than thirty thousand cater- 
pillars, devour a very large number of other destruc- 
tive creatures at other times of the year, and also 
feed to a considerable extent upon the seeds of 
troublesome and mischievous weeds. The insects 
which they kill they destroy, in almost every instance, 
before their tale of work is complete, and before they 
have had an opportunity of providing for a subse- 
quent generation. And so, while the grain which 
they devour is merely so much grain destroyed, the 
insects which they kill represent, not only a vast 
amount of human produce saved, but an immense 
decrease in the numbers of such destroyers during 
the ensuing year. And, as I have before shown, 
the lapse of a very few years without the interven- 
tion of such creatures as the sparrow and its allies 
would result in the disappearance of man from the 
face of the earth. 
