20 THE HOUSE SPARROW : 



my estimate, not one-fiftieth as numerous as they have 

 been within my memory. Every year the martins are 

 finally banished by the sparroAvs from numbers of places 

 where they have built, in ever decreasing numbers, for 

 years. I could give any number of instances of this. 

 Passing through villages where formerly there were 

 hundreds of martins, one now sees none, or perhaps 

 some three or four nests, all, or nearly so, occupied by 

 sparrows. In districts where any martins are still left, 

 they will keep on building a nest or two in favourite 

 places every year, only to be turned out of them ; and 

 particularly within a radius of a few miles round my 

 place, which supplies a large yearly surplus of them, they 

 try to establish themselves on every new suitable building 

 — but all in vain.* Of all the colonies of martins that I 

 have been acquainted with anywhere, I do not know of 

 one now remaining, and the only successful new one 

 within my knowledge where the martins are not pro- 

 tected by killing the sparrows (an exception which goes 

 to prove the rule), is at the ruins of Thorndon Hall near 

 Brentwood, burnt out a few years since. This house is 

 in the middle of a park ; probably the sparrows do not 

 care to live there because no corn is to be had near 

 enough to please them. 



* To give one instance, a few years ago, seeing sparrows about a 

 few martins' nests on a new small house near my own, I asked the 

 man who lived there whether he liked the sparrows. He said : ' I 

 hate them, and am throwing stones at them all day, but cannot keep 

 them from the martins' nests.' I lent him a gun ; his son, a boy 

 about twelve years old, took kindly to shooting the sparrows, killed 

 I think nearly 200 in less than a month, and always kept the place 

 free from them ; in two years there were twenty-four martins' nests 

 on the house. The man then died, and the next tenant, having no 

 son to shoot the sparrows, did not trouble himself about the martins, 

 and the sparrows cleared them all out in one season. The martins 

 have often built a few nests, but I do not think that any young ones 

 have flown there since. 



