CHAP. xi. MASTER IMPERTINENCE. 149 



except for an etymologist. He alights at your very feet, 

 cocks his eye at you, takes what he wants under your very 

 nose, flies off a few yards and boasts of what he has done 

 in a clear and audible voice. What cares he if you do use 

 bad language ? 



He respects neither man nor beast. He will claim his 

 share of the elephant's rice at the Zoo, and assist the lion 

 to pick the shoulder-blade of a horse. I cannot con- 

 scientiously say I have seen him do it, but I am convinced 

 he will, on occasion, enter the reptile house, and perch on a 

 somnolent crocodile's snout to take a drink. He will steal 

 his grain from under the peacock's very beak, though all 

 the eyes in that conceited bird's tail gleam o'er him green 

 with jealousy of his neat and becoming attire ; and he will 

 scold the blinking eagle roundly if that falcon king be not 

 careful to leave him some succulent shreds of meat. He 

 will sit on the other end of a parrot's perch, shake out his 

 feathers and freely criticize the outlandish taste in dress of 

 the uncivilized dwellers in South American forests, remark- 

 ing that the green is after all inferior in brilliancy to that 

 of a St. John's Wood 'bus. There is positively no limit to 

 his impertinence. 



Impertinence ! Yes, one could forgive his impertinence. 

 But look at the harm he does to the country. Well, well, 

 I'm not going to argue the question. But, in truth, I'm no 

 great believer in the harm. Was it not Buffon who said 

 that a pair of sparrows in the breeding season destroy 

 four thousand caterpillars a week ? Or was it forty 

 thousand ? I am bad at remembering figures, but it struck 

 me, as a boy, that it represented a prodigious number of 

 grubs. This is what the forester of the City of Boston 

 says : " The introduction of the sparrow was immediately 

 attended with benefit almost beyond calculation. The 

 trees on the Common were infested with a nasty yellow 



