HOUSE SPAREOW. 87 



THE HOUSE SPARROW. < J 



Passer domesficus. 



The House Sparrow is a resident, steadily increasing- in 

 numbers. The enormous amount of damag-e done by the 

 swarms of Sjoarrows found in this agricultural county is 

 perhaps hardly realized, although a walk down the side of 

 a field of ripening wheat near a village or homestead will 

 reveal plenty of evidence of the destruction wroug-ht by them, 

 in the shape of wheat ears as completely emptied of their 

 contents as if they had already been through the threshing 

 machine. 



The Sparrow question is too long to be entered upon fully 

 here, but those interested in the subject may peruse with 

 advantage ' The Hoiise Sparrow' by Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., 

 Col. C. Russell, and Dr. Elliott Coues; ' The Sparrow Shooter ' 

 by the Rev. F. O. Morris j and 'On the Misdeeds of the Sparrow,' 

 by Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun. The first and last of these 

 publications are against, and the second in favour of the 

 Sparrow. It is sufficient here to say that the careful in- 

 vestigations carried out, chiefly in Norfolk, by Mr. Gurney, 

 and communicated as above, and in a paper read before the 

 Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture {^Norfolk Clironicle, ist 

 August, 1885), prove that the customari/ food of old Sparrows 

 consists of com in every month of the year, varied in some 

 months with vegetable matter and seeds. The young in the 

 nest are fed upon caterpillars, beetles, and other insects, but 

 also quite as much upon ripe and unripe corn, the soft milky 

 grains of wheat and barley being found in their crops in July. 

 Gardeners have plenty of complaint against the Sparrow, and 

 few ornithologists have a good word for it. The rapid 

 increase of the Sparrow must have the effect of cheeking that 

 of some of our other small birds, and not only indirectly so, 

 for it is not wholly guiltless of attacking and tyrannizing 

 over weaker and more gentle birds ; House Martins especially 



