196 THE RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS 



I wonder how many of what we consider to be our 

 maturest convictions rest on, or are coloured by, 

 our earliest prejudices ! 



But even the sparrow has his merits. His 

 activity, his happiness, his friendship for man, and 

 his pert and pushing confidence in him are among 

 them. He is, in consequence, already the most 

 cosmopolitan of all birds. Wherever civilised man 

 goes, or cultivation spreads, the house-sparrow 

 goes with them. Where they do not go, he does 

 not. The cock sparrow of the country side, very 

 different, be it remembered, from his smoke- 

 begrimed brother of the large towns, is comely 

 enough, and, were he not so common, would 

 probably be admitted to be really handsome. On 

 the other hand, he is noisy, impudent, self-asserting, 

 quarrelsome. His incessant twittering or chirping, 

 with no approach to a song, is wearisome to an 

 extreme. He is destructive, to an incredible 

 degree, of all kinds of grain, fruit, vegetable, 

 especially peas, eating, it is said, many times his 

 own weight in a day, and wasting much more than 

 he eats. He is as quarrelsome as an Irishman at 

 a fair or at a funeral-wake. See a cock sparrow, 

 early in the year, fall suddenly and unprovoked 

 upon another. The moment the loud and angry 



