THE UNDERLYING IDEA 73 



of various kinds, and feeds them to his young. This 

 taste passes as his children grow older, especially as 

 shortly the seeds begin to ripen. Now is the time 

 for the sparrow to fatten. Now he is eating the 

 food for which he was really built. By the time the 

 wheat is ripe there are sparrows enough about to form 

 cjuite a flock, and when these settle down in a wheat, 

 rye, or oats field and feed upon the grain, meanwhile 

 shaking out upon the ground perhaps as much as they 

 eat, the farmer begins to realize that the sparrow is 

 not his friend. 



When winter comes the struggle for existence 

 among the birds is intensified, and comparatively few 

 of them dare face it. Most of our birds betake them- 

 selves to less rigorous cjuarters, leaving to the spar- 

 row a comparatively small number of competitors for 

 the diminished supply of food. As long as the snow 

 is off the ground the sparrows can find sufficient sus- 

 tenance. They gather themselves into groups and sally 

 out from the city into the open country. The imme- 

 diate result is that great quantities of weed seeds are 

 seized upon by the English sparrow, as, indeed, by 

 every other finch which is with us in winter. Per- 

 haps we have not given the little fellow credit for 

 the good he does at this particular time, for the rest 

 of the account truly does not help him in our esteem. 



There is a further direct advantage in the sparrow's 



