74 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



sociability. One robin may nest in the vines about 

 your purcli. If there were room for a dozen, scarcely 

 more than one would be likely to use it. because he 

 would drive away any other robin who attempted to 

 siiare the neighborhood with him. To the sparrow 

 company- is always in order. While he may quarrel 

 from morning until night with his fellow, it is a so- 

 ciable quarrel and neither would willingly forego it. 

 This union is strength among birds, as with man. 

 Every animal is safer from his enemies when he can 

 have the constant presence of others of his own kind. 

 The deer that stavs in the herd is safer from the 

 wolves. It is only when the latter succeed in cutting 

 out some weaker or less sagacious animal that these 

 carnivorous creatures succeed in tearing down their 

 prey. I think the superiority of the sparrow over 

 most of our common birds, when considered as a city 

 dweller, is scarcely understood. Because he had won 

 in the race with other birds is no necessary indication 

 that he warred directly against them. Birdmen often 

 attribute to him a quarrelsome disposition, as if he 

 actually drove other birds away. It almost seems 

 like animosity against the sparrow to speak of him as 

 attacking blackbirds and crows. It is a cowardly crow 

 who can be driven away by a sparrow, and if the two 

 cannot live together it seems to me certainly to the 

 discredit of the crow and not of the sparrow. I be- 



