BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 259 



them, not only as beautiful additions to, but even as 

 helps in, our gardens. 



Of all garden birds, I suppose the house-sparrow is 

 everywhere the most abundant, and it is not easy to 

 say much in his favour. He makes himself at home 

 not only in the countries of which he is a true native, 

 but in America and Australia, to which he has been 

 taken by English settlers, he increases and multiplies 

 till he has become a subject of national importance ; 

 and wherever he is his character is unaltered, he is 

 everywhere the proverbial type of boldness, impudence, 

 and familiarity. His robberies in the garden extend to 

 almost everything, beginning with the flowers of the 

 crocus in the spring, and sparing nothing till he leaves 

 the gardens for the wheat-fields, where he literally 

 takes tithe of the corn, for his robberies are said to 

 extend in some seasons to quite one-tenth of the crop. 

 Miss Ormerod, who is our great authority on injury to 

 crops by animals of all sorts, gives her verdict against 

 the sparrow in the strongest terms, and advises his 

 wholesale destruction; and the old churchwardens' 

 accounts, and the many sparrow clubs existing through- 

 out the country for the express purpose of diminishing 

 their number, if not of annihilating them, bear witness 

 to the general belief that they are mischievous and 

 useless. Yet I like the sparrow, and much may be 



