I 7 4 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



districts that it is to be met with, and even then it 

 is never found congregating in such numbers as the 

 last-named species, 1 and is altogether of shier habits. 

 This local distribution and different mode of life 

 is curiously at variance with what has been observed 

 of it in other parts of the world, as, for instance, 

 in many parts of Asia. The late Edward Blyth 

 wrote: " In the great rice -exporting station of 

 Akydb we have seen this species so familiarly hop- 

 ping about in the public streets that it would only 

 just move out of the way of the passers-by ; and 

 we have also known it breeding so numerously in 

 dwelling-houses as to be quite a nuisance from its 

 incessant shrill chirping. This bird is the common 

 House Sparrow of China and Japan, the Philippines, 

 Burma, and more or less over the whole Malayan 

 region; but in India it is restricted to the North- 

 western Himalaya." He adds that throughout its 

 vast range of distribution it exhibits no variation of 



1 This does not apply at the period of the autumn migration, when 

 a considerable accession to the numbers of the resident birds is made 

 by the arrival of flocks from the Continent. See Rodd's Birds of 

 Cornwall and the Sally Isles, p. 56 ; Cordeaux's Birds of the Hztmber 

 District, p. 51 ; J. D. Power (Kent), Zoologist, 1869, p. 1497; and 

 E. T. Booth, Catalogue of Birds in Ids Museum, p. 215 (2d ed.) 



