210 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



together with, the raven, crow, and magpie, in these 

 game-preserving districts, necessitates the destruction 

 by some means or other of our too abundant finches. 

 That wonderful balance observable in the animal king- 

 dom, by which the necessities of each particular class 

 are made available to keep down the excess of others, 

 has been utterly disregarded, and in the same manner 

 that the undue slaughter of our insect-eating birds, 

 results in a plague of flies and caterpillars, so also the 

 persecution of hawks and owls occasions an undue 

 proportion of small birds, whose ravages, by some means 

 or other, must be kept within bounds. Let the net, 

 the gun, and above all means the " clappers" be used as 

 of old, to scare the feathered marauders from the farmer's 

 corn, whose patience I admit is sorely tried, when he 

 sees whole rows of empty ears, extending some yards 

 into his fields, from the side of each fence ; but before 

 he empties the full vials of his wrath upon those " brutes 

 of sparrows," let him pause and consider, for one mo- 

 ment, where would have been those crops, of which a 

 tithe is taken, had those very birds been wanting during 

 the spring and summer. All grain-eating birds feed their 

 young on insects. Those flocks of sparrows, greenfinches, 

 linnets, buntings, &c., so busy pilfering the ripening 

 grain, will pair again in spring, and hundreds and 

 thousands of little mouths will open, every minute in the 

 day, to receive some insect atom from their parents' 

 beaks. Flies, caterpillars, grubs, and worms, of every 

 imaginable description, will then support these little 

 creatures in their earlier stages, and man, with all his 

 powers of thought and skill, would fight in vain against 

 those insect myriads, which none but the microscopic 

 eye of the bird perceives, none but our "feathered 

 friends" can k^ep in check. Amongst other noxious 

 insects destroyed, in immense quantities, by the common 

 sparrow is that destructive Melolontha, commonly 



