26 THE HO USE SPARRO W : 



Not many are to be seen in moorland countries where 

 corn is not grown. I heard some years ago that at 

 Mauritius, where they had been introduced, no corn being 

 grown in the island, the sparrows kept to the towns and 

 did not go into the country. 



Of ripe corn, sparrows prefer wheat to oats, and oats to 

 barley ; probably because wheat wants no shelling, and 

 oats are easily shelled. They neither like to eat barley 

 with its husks, nor the trouble of getting these off;, though 

 in default of other corn they will eat it, sometimes un- 

 shelled, sometimes after partially or almost entirely shell- 

 ing it. Sparrows like green barley, and it is often the 

 first corn they can find in neighbouring fields forward 

 enough to eat ; they will then stick to it till it becomes 

 too hard to shell well, when they leave it for the wheat. 

 Some farmers in Norfolk sow a narrow strip of oats at 

 that side of a wheat-field from which the sparrows are 

 expected to come ; the oats, being ready for them earlier 

 than the wheat, keep them occupied and save the wheat 

 for some time. Although sparrows feed greedily on green 

 corn, yet while feeding on it they always like to get some 

 ripe corn for a change, and will then go a long way to 

 any place where old wheat can be got, as where straw 

 with a little waste grain in it has been put down in a yard, 

 or a haystack has been thatched with it. They will also 

 turn over horse-droppings for unbitten oats in a road 

 alongside a field of green corn which they are feeding on. 



The destruction of corn by sparrows is very great, but 

 varies so much in different places that I cannot pretend 

 to guess the proportion of the whole corn crop of the 

 country to which it amounts. The mischief is greatest 

 near towns and villages. As an instance, a friend who, a 

 few years back, had four acres of barley close to the 



