THE HOUSE SPARROW. 



By a Friend of the Farriers, 



COLONEL C. RUSSELL. 



The sparrow question has interested me from child- 

 hood ; the first definite observation I can remember was 

 that of opening half-grown nestling sparrows some fifty 

 years back, and finding in their gizzards ripe wheat about 

 June 20, when none could be got in the fields ; the 

 nearest place where it was likely to be found being a 

 farmyard about half a mile distant. It struck me at 

 once ; so much for calculations of the numbers of insects 

 destroyed by sparrows, based on counting the visits of 

 sparrows to their nest, and assuming that they carried in 

 nothing but insects. From that time or earlier I have 

 observed the habits of sparrows ; up to 1870 only loosely,, 

 and my impression then was that they lived mainly on 

 corn, and though they took a few insects sometimes, that 

 they no more lived on them than boys live on nuts and 

 blackberries. 



One most objectionable habit I have noticed from the 

 first — that of turning the house-martins out of their nests 

 as fast as they build them. A decrease in the numbers 

 of the martins by this persecution has been going on 

 steadily for the last fifty years, till they are, according to 



