SPARROWS AND INSECTS. 191 



fariiier's most valuable auxiliaries, when its numbers are 

 kept within due limits j destroying an enormous quantity 

 of caterpillars, grubs, and insects. The good it does in 

 this way cannot be over-estimated. The loss occasioned to 

 the wheat, in one single year, in a department of Eastern 

 France, by a solitary species of larvae, was computed, not 

 long ago, at £160,000. To the ravages of this insect were 

 attributed the scanty harvests of the three years preceding 

 1856. In certain fields the loss amounted to nearly half 

 the crop. Out of twenty pods of colza, taken at hazard, 

 and containing five hundred and four seeds, only two hun- 

 dred and ninety-six seeds were good ; the rest were con- 

 sumed or damaged by insects. And all this destruction 

 was due to the circumstance that the French cultivators, 

 in their ignorance, had carried on a war of extermination 

 against the small insectivorous birds, and especially against 

 the sparrows. The hedge-sparrow consumes some five 

 hundred and fifty insects per diem. Frederick the Greai} 

 declared hostilities against the sparrows, because they were 

 as fond of cherries as he was. Of course, they beat a 

 retreat, and disappeared. But in a couple of years not 

 only no cherries were to be had, but scarcely any other 

 fruit; the caterpillars revelled in unlimited abundance. 

 The great Prussian conqueror was glad, therefore, to sign 

 a treaty of peace with his feathered allies, and to allow 

 them a share of the fruit which their efibrts preserved. 



Reference may here be made to those finches which are 

 among the pleasant song-birds of Temperate Europe. In 

 most wooded and cultivated districts, amonfi- the trees of 



