THE HOUSE SPARROW; 



By an Ornithologist, 

 J. H. GURNEY, Junr. 



THE common house sparrow {Passer domesticiis j frin- 

 gillidce^ the finch tribe) has some enthusiastic patrons 

 in this country among the friends of dumb animals, 

 and it has many deadly enemies among farmers and gar- 

 deners. I do not propose to enter into the charges brought 

 against it by gardeners,* so much as to treat the question 

 from a farmer's point of view. 



No one can for a moment doubt that the sparrow ques- 

 tion is now a very important one, and that it is becoming, 

 year by year, more so ; that is, if only a tithe of what has 

 been said and written about it at farmers' clubs and in 

 agricultural newspapers be true. A large farmer in 

 Cheshire told his audience at a meeting last year that in 

 his opinion sparrows, assisted by other small birds, had 

 done the country ^770,094 worth of damage in a year, 

 reckoning a bushel per acre all over the kingdom {vide 

 The Times y Sept. 13th, 1884, Chester Coiira7it, h.ug.2jt\i). 

 If this tremendous estimate be anywhere near the mark 



* Besides eating peas frequently and gooseberries occasionally, 

 sparrows have an evil propensity for picking flowers to pieces, 

 including the crocus, dahlia, polyanthus, iiepatica, heartsease, and 

 wistaria. 



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