190 THE COCK-SPARROW. 



digesting it, in being removed from the view of external 

 objects, wliicli produce anxieties, and affect the process of 

 digestion. 



What shall we say of the Sparrows, — of those familiar, 

 intrusive, curious, restless, " perky " birds which every- 

 body knows 1 which frequent our fields and farmyards, our 

 copses and hedgerows, and build on our housetops and 

 under our eaves? The common cock-sparrow is even 

 more of a familiar friend than the robin : he has been 

 well described as "the bold, bright bird, so full of assur- 

 ance, so free and easy in his manners, that one sees every- 

 where, dodging about under the horses' feet in the street ; 

 hail-fellow-well-met with the pigs, the sheep, and the cows 

 in the farmyard ; feeding with the pigeons and the fowls ; 

 helping himself to the grain from the stacks, and the seeds 

 from the furrow, as coolly as if all the farm produce be- 

 longed to him. A small, stout, active fellow, getting up a 

 squabble in the garden with his congeners about the right 

 of possession to some roosting, or nesting, or feeding jilace, 

 and making a most astounding hubbub ; chirping away on 

 the roof where he means to build his nest, whether you 

 like it or not." A strong, lively bird, that seems to laugh 

 at frost and snow, and to maintain his cheerfulness, like 

 Mark Tapley, under the most discouraging circumstances. 



The tendency of the sparrow to increase is very remark- 

 able, for one pair of birds will frequently bring up fourteen 

 nestlings in a season. This extraordinary reproductive 

 power is Nature's provision against the numerous enemies 

 to which this bird is exposed. It is, however, one of the 



