A lX)MEStIC TRAGEDY. 215 



a trap cage, caught no less than forty old birds, all coming with 

 food in their mouths to feed the helpless nestlings. But the 

 Sparrow will even go beyond its own species in rendering its 

 kind offices ; and there is a well-known story of one which 

 picked up an acquaintance with a Canary that was hung up in 

 its cage amongst some trees in a garden at Chelsea. The ac- 

 quaintance began one morning with the Sparrow dropping a 

 worm into the cage for the Canary, and after a while it became 

 so intimate that the Canary would take the dainty bits directly 

 from the bill of his generous friend. The fame of this bene- 

 volent Sparrow soon spread abroad, and other Canaries were 

 hung in adjoining gardens to share in his attentions ; nor were 

 they put there in vain ; for he visited them all, though his 

 first and longest visit was always paid to his old acquaintance. 



But that incident of the young bird tied to the nest by its leg 

 reminds us of another and much more serious mishap which 

 once befel a Sparrow, the story of which is quoted by Mr. 

 Yarrell from the " Illustrated London News." Those who know 

 the Rotunda in Sackville Street, Dublin, will remember the 

 richly carved frieze, representing the heads of oxen and festoons 

 of flowers, which runs around the centre building and forms its 

 principal external ornament. In the hollow of the eye of one of 

 the heads a Sparrow built his nest, and amongst the materials 

 composing it there chanced unhappily to be a woollen thread 

 with a noose at one end of it. By some means the poor bird got 

 his head inserted in the noose ; and in his eiforts to extricate 

 himself, he fell from his nest and hung himself by the neck. lie 

 was observed for a while making desperate efforts to escape, but 

 in vain ; the mishap put a period to his career, and for some time 

 his remains were to be seen gibbeted at his own door, and flut- 

 tering in the wind, while the straws of the nest projected from the 

 eye-hole above his head. 



No bird is more familiar than the House-sparrow, though v. e 

 fear there are few persons who would be much disposed to give 

 it a place amongst their feathered friends. But there is reason 

 to hope that better days are coming, not merely for Sparrows, 

 but for the feathered tribes generally. It is beginning to be 

 understood that the entire race of birds have a work to do which 

 is of vast importance even to man himself, and that his interests 

 are best promoted, not by their wholesale destruction, but by their 



