22 THE HO USE SPARRO IV : 



all my life at last boiled over, and, resolving that the 

 martins should have one safe place, I began to protect 

 them by killing down the sparrows. It was a hard fight 

 at first ; the martins' nests had to be watched almost 

 constantly, and, if I remember rightly, 150 sparrows were 

 shot — mostly about these nests— in about a fortnight. 

 War has been waged against them ever since. The first 

 year or two we did not take the trouble to kill them 

 in winter, but this did not answer ; a great number 

 lived about the place, many roosting in the martins' 

 nests. When we began shooting the sparrov/s in spring 

 they would all go away for a day or two, but kept coming 

 back again, so that constant watchfulness for weeks was 

 required to kill them down ; the plan was therefore 

 adopted of paying a penny for shooting each sparrow as 

 soon as it show^s itself all the year round. They are shot 

 with very small charges of dust shot, mostly from inside 

 doors and windows, or from loopholes made to command 

 the places they generally come to ; they dislike this 

 practice, and do not come much — less and less every 

 year. The plan has been most successful ; the place is 

 wonderfully free from sparrows — sometimes we do not 

 see one for weeks together — and the martins have in- 

 creased in numbers, till last year they had 170 nests 

 about my house and buildings, and this year there are 

 237, and more will be built yet. 



The food in the sparrows killed at first (June, 1870) 

 was examined and found to be mostly corn and broken 

 maize, for which they went to a farmyard nearly half a 

 mile off. In this way becoming much interested in the 

 subject, I investigated the food and habits of sparrows 

 with special care during some seven years, and worked 

 pretty hard collecting from a wide extent of country, and 



