64 Oxford: Spring and Early 



parasite of mankind, the Sparrow. He, growing 

 sootier every year, and doing his useful dirty 

 work with untiring diligence and appetite, lives 

 on his noisy and quarrelsome life even in the 

 very heart of London. 



Whether the surroundings of the Oxford 

 Sparrows have given them a sense of higher 

 things, I cannot say ; but they have ways which 

 have suggested to me that the Sparrow must at 

 some period of his existence have fallen from a 

 higher state, of which some individuals have a 

 Platonic oLva^v^ig which prompts them to purer 

 walks of life. No sooner does the summer begin 

 to bring out the flies among our pollard willows, 

 than they become alive with Sparrows. There 

 you may see them, as you repose on one of the 

 comfortable seats on the brink of the Cherwell 

 in the Parks, catching flies in the air with a 

 vigour and address which in the course of a few 

 hundred years might almost develop into ele- 

 gance. Again and again I have had to turn 

 my glass upon a bird to see if it could really be 

 a Sparrow that was fluttering in the air over the 

 water with an activity apparently meant to rival 



