20 THE HOUSE SPARROW. 



and after satisfying their appetites at his expense, return 

 to spend the day in town." 



Selby, in the first volume of his work on British Orni- 

 thology, cites that it is reckoned by Low among the 

 feathered denizens of the northern islands of Scotland, 

 where it greatly annoys the agriculturist in the serious 

 depredations which it commits upon bigg, a coarse 

 variet}^ of barley, the only grain that is grown to any 

 extent in those remote settlements. 



Mudie affirms that they commit some mischief upon 

 small seeds when sown, upon patches of grain when first 

 ripe, in the vicinity of villages and towns, and also, at 

 certain seasons, upon the buds of shrubs and trees. 



Yarrell says, "When summer advances, and the young 

 birds of the year are able to follow the old ones, they 

 become gregarious, flying in flocks together to the 

 nearest field of wheat, as soon as the corn is sufficiently 

 hardened to enable them to pick it out, and here for a 

 time they are in good quarters ; but when the corn is 

 housed, and their supply cut off, they seek the adven- 

 titious meal which human habitations afford." 



Sonini, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire !Naturelle, published 

 in 1817, says, "Sparrows are impudent parasites, living 

 only in society with man, and dividing with him his 

 grain, his fruit, and his home ; they attack the first fruit 

 that ripens, the grain as it approaches maturity, and 

 even that which has been stored in granaries. Some 

 writers have wrongly supposed that the insects destroyed 

 by them compensated for their ravages on grain ; eighty- 

 two grains of wheat were crowded in the craw of a 

 sparrow that had been shot by the writer, and Eougier 

 de la Bergerie, to whom we owe excellent memoirs on 



