76 SPARROW. 



bird; and for four successive years, with a brief interval, all 

 her progeny, which must at the expiration of that period, 

 have amounted, at the rate of two or three broods a year, 

 and five or six young to a brood, to some fifty or sixty at 

 least, were 'brought out' under the matronage of their mother, 

 to the morning and evening entertainments which Patrick 

 Corbett gave. Doubtless they returned the compliment in 

 the way of 'concerts of ancient music,' for even the chirp of 

 a Sparrow must be music to the dweller in a London street. 



The interval above alluded to was a space of some two or 

 three months, during which time our female friend shunned 

 the society of the keeper of the itinerant coffee-shop, who 

 had, most unintentionally, wounded her maternal feelings. An 

 individual Sparrow of one of her broods finding it at its first 

 essay in the air, not so easy a thing to fly up as to fly 

 down, was removed by Patrick, out of pure kindness, to his 

 own house for the day, where it was treated with the greatest 

 care and affection. Nevertheless it died, and the mother 

 shewed her sense of the wrong of the supposed child-stealing, 

 by abstaining for the period mentioned from the society of 

 her patron and friend; but in process of time a new family 

 arrived, and for their sakes she overgot the injury, made up 

 the quarrel, which, as it takes two parties to make, and in 

 this case there was only one, it was no difficult matter to 

 do, and all went on, and for aught I know, may still go 

 on, at the corner of Tavistock Square, as harmoniously and 

 pleasantly as before: 'adsit omen.' 



The following pleasing instance of both instinct and affection 

 on behalf of another individual of our present species is from 

 the pen of Mr. William H. Cordeaux, in the 'Zoologist,' page 

 2798: 'Living in the city portion of the great metropolis of 

 London, I observed, one afternoon, in the aperture generally 

 left for the cellar, or kitchen window, when underground, an 

 unfledged House Sparrow, incapacitated from flying to any 

 distance, which had been inadvertently precipitated down this 

 same dungeon, across which, in an oblique direction, was laid 

 an iron bar, extending within a foot of the surface; the 

 mother was at the top, looking down with pity and alarm 

 at the awkward position of this, perhaps, her only child; 

 many and ingenious were the attempts on the part both of 

 parent and offspring for the regaining of the latter's lost 

 position ; each and all proved futile and unavailing. I looked 

 on with a degree of pleasurable excitement, mixed with fear 



