A LESSON IN BIRD STUDY. 31 



Perhaps some of my readers would appreciate such 

 an exercise. 



Suppose you are desirous of studying the spar- 

 rows of your locality, but on consulting your key 

 you become perplexed by the details, and scarcely 

 know where or how to begin. Instead of trying to 

 learn all the minutiae at once, it is better to seize 

 upon several of the more striking peculiarities of 

 each species, as designated in your hand-book, and 

 hold them firmly in mind. 



The sparrows are, as a rule, plain-colored birds, 

 the colors being arranged in stripes on the upper 

 parts and often on the lower. The English spar- 

 row is an obnoxious fellow, I know, differing in 

 that respect from our native sparrows ; but he 

 affords an example of the general appearance of 

 all the members of this mteresting group. Now 

 observe what your key says about the various 

 species of the sparrow household. There are the 

 song-sparrow and the grass-finch — they are of 

 nearly the same size, and both have striped breasts ; 

 but the song-sparrow has a dark blotch on the cen- 

 ter of his chest, and a dark brown stripe on each 

 side of his throat, while the grass-finch has two 

 white lateral tail-feathers, which can be plainly 

 seen when the biixl takes to wing. 



