THE PEECH1NG BIKDS. 171 



policy should be found productive of good results, the 

 birds being neither unduly encouraged nor ruthlessly 

 exterminated, but judiciously kept under. It must not 

 be forgotten that, although the grown bird has little 

 fancy for anything but grain and fruit, the food of the 

 young consists entirely of caterpillars and all manner of 

 noxious grubs ; so that, without perhaps making up for 

 the very considerable damage they do during the rest of 

 the year, there are yet several months of parenthood in 

 which the sparrows render not unimportant services by 

 way of reparation. The means of keeping them under are 

 various, much work being done in this direction by the 

 organisations known as " sparrow-clubs " ; and if these 

 crusaders confined their attentions to the heads of the 

 infidel only, they would be less to blame than is the case, 

 for they also destroy numbers of other interesting and 

 harmless birds. These notes will have gone to press 

 before the appearance of Miss Carrington's promised pam- 

 phlet, but we have heard much said on both sides of the 

 question. The domestic cat is another valuable agent in 

 the sparrow death-rate, preferring its oily flesh to that 

 of any other wild bird. The sparrow is, as already men- 

 tioned, essentially the companion of man and the bird of 

 cultivation ; and the only portions of these islands in which 

 it does not occur are a few wilds as yet untouched by 

 the ploughshare. Description of so familiar a bird seems 

 superfluous, although the smoke of cities often obscures 

 the distinctive bluish crown, black chin, and light brown 

 chest. Its favourite nesting-place is in the roofs of our 

 dwellings, and too often in some drain -pipe, which its 

 nest chokes, with unpleasant consequences. It also nests, 

 usually in solitary pairs, in holes in trees, and I have 

 found its nest in the hen-house, close to the sitting hens. 

 Swallows' nests under the eaves are also appropriated for 

 the later broods. I have also taken the nest in trees, 

 but never in company with the tree-sparrow, though the 

 latter was breeding in neighbouring trees. The nest 



