Can any one else, who wishes to speak on behalf of 

 the Sparrows, produce any evidence of their feeding 

 not occasionally, but habitually in any locality in the 

 United Kingdom, on the Wireworm, or on the larvae of 

 the Gamma Moth or Crane-fly? They eat the Rose 

 Aphis, but no one has detected them eating the Wheat 

 Aphis (A. granarid), which is much more to the point, 

 though at least one competent observer has made 

 special search for it. 



But whatever be the kinds of larva which they eat, 

 and whatever the quantity, if Sparrows did not eat 

 them, would not our Greenfinches and Chaffinches do 

 so ? This seems the true way of putting it. 



No one has ever answered the late Colonel RusselFs 

 query : " Why is it that in fields far away from 

 farm -premises, where there are no Sparrows, insects 

 do not increase and multiply ? " And why have 

 not insects multiplied at Colonel Russell's place in 

 Essex, where, for many years, Sparrows were rigorously 

 kept down, in fact almost exterminated ? The reason 

 must be that the caterpillars are eaten by other small 

 birds, such as Chaffinches, Greenfinches, and Yellow- 

 Hammers^ and by a host of Warblers and other birds 

 which visit this country for the summer, when insect- 

 life in all its stages is rampant. 



It is all very well to suppose that by eating fourteen 

 flies a Sparrow disposes of their subsequent progeny to 

 the tune of 280,000,000; but we know what these 

 calculations, which look so prodigious on paper, are 

 worth. Under ordinary conditions, how many of the 

 two hundred million flies would reach maturity ? per- 

 haps very few, or none at all. 



It is a shame to see how the pretty House-Martins are 

 decreasing in this country at the hands of the Sparrows, 

 which dispossess them of their nests. There is hardly 



