LONDON BIRDS 7 



Sparrows are a dainty meal. Unlike the rabbits and 

 guinea-pigs, who will nibble and sniff at a python's 

 nose, they seem too wide-awake to doubt their fate for 

 a moment, and crouch together in a corner, the picture 

 of dejection till, if the snakes are hungry, there is a 

 sudden flutter, and the miserable party scuttle over to 

 another corner one short in numbers, and one may see 

 a little bunch of feathers, at all sorts of impossible 

 angles, peeping out from a coil of scales. The stroke is 

 almost quicker than the eye can follow. 



London Sparrows evidently look upon Corinthian 

 capitals as designed for their especial convenience in 

 the nesting season ; and Bishop Stanley tells of one 

 pair which had the impertinence to build in the mouth 

 of the lion on Northumberland House, long ago 

 departed to the limbo of forgotten landmarks where 

 Copenhagen and the 'big' Duke on the Arch have 

 since joined him. When the Duke's statue was taken 

 down for removal to Aldershot, in 1884, it was found 

 that more than one bird like Gavroche in the plaster 

 elephant of the Place de la Bastille had set up house 

 inside. There was a Sparrow's nest with a newly 

 hatched young bird and several eggs in the right 

 arm ; and, in the elbow of the left, a nestful of young 

 Starlings almost fledged. 



The front door of both establishments was a hole in 

 one of the hands. 



We are told that the highest development of the 

 race of birds carrying with it precedence by right 

 divine, is reached in the order ' Passeres,' the family of 



