a country-place where this has not gone on at some time 

 or other, although it has never happened to Mr. Morris 

 (cf. ' Sparrow-Shooter/ p. 7). Some have argued that 

 this does not matter, because the Sparrows do not 

 kill them, but only evict them ; but wherever they go 

 it is all the same, they are so much bullied that very 

 few of them succeed in rearing young *. 



It may be that iu some exceptional seasons (when a 

 great plague of insect-life shall again occur), as in 1574, 

 when it is said cockchaffers gathered in such numbers 

 on the banks of the Severn as to prevent the working 

 of the water-mills, and in 1868 when they formed a 

 black cloud in Gal way, which darkened the sky for a 

 league, destroying vegetation so completely as to change 

 summer into winter ('Wild Birds 5 Protection Report,' 

 p. 170), Sparrows will do good. Bearing this in mind 

 no one should advocate their extirpation; but Mr. 

 Morris and his friends claim much more than this for 

 them. They claim that in an ordinary year, when 

 insects are not more than usually numerous, Sparrows 

 do more good than harm : it is exceedingly difficult to 

 prove a negative ; but I do not believe that any one who 

 has not made a series of dissections realizes how much 

 corn they eat. 



Mr. Wesley's book gives a table prepared by many 

 hands with much care (p. 12), a study of which will 

 show that corn forms their customary food for every 

 month of the year. In January it is corn from stacks 

 and from poultry-yards, mingled with refuse-corn from 



* Nor is it confined to the Martins : every bird is, more or less, 

 driven from the vicinity of houses by the obnoxious Sparrow. For 

 my part I would sooner see two or three Chaffinches and Nut- 

 hatches eat the crumbs which are put out of the window, than any 

 number of Sparrows, which, by their presence, only uturp the place 

 of better birds than themselves. 



