RESPECTABLE AND DISREPUTABLE RELATIVES 53 



easily found. Were an Act of Parliament passed 

 requiring the owners of property to destroy the 

 nests of all sparrows harbouring on their property, 

 it would be a somewhat laborious but otherwise 

 easy thing to give it effect. A ladder would be 

 the sole equipment necessary for the campaign. 

 Five -sixths of the nests are placed in buildings, 

 and if they were not advertised by their untidiness 

 their owners would obligingly point out where they 

 are. Those placed in trees are invariably of studied 

 conspicuousness. 



In their nesting habits the house-sparrows ex- 

 hibit another phase of their tendency to parasitism. 

 What we may take to be their own natural nest 

 is a clumsy domed structure placed in trees. 

 When they nest in buildings they omit the dome, 

 and are always ready to dispense with nest -build- 

 ing altogether if they can steal another bird's 

 nest. In this connection the swallows are their 

 chosen victims, and there is some reason to believe 

 that they occasionally steal nests from one another. 

 But they give no symptom of a desire to pursue 

 further than this the road of the cuckoo, for the 

 sparrow has a genuine pleasure in the labours 

 of family-raising. 



