THE UNDERLYING IDEA 71 



the sparrow from his willingness to associate with 

 man, and there are comparatively few birds with 

 whom he must share them. Few birds select the im- 

 mediate neighborhood of man's home for their nests. 

 They may live in the neighboring trees, they may 

 haunt his orchard, but his house, for the most part, 

 they decline to frequent. 



Still another quality which makes for success in 

 this buccaneer is the willingness with which he will 

 vary his food as occasion requires. It is a not infre- 

 quent characteristic of the bird family that each spe- 

 cies should have its own rather restricted diet. Birds 

 are quite particular eaters, and many of them will 

 come well nigh to starvation before they will use un- 

 accustomed food. The sparrow, on the contrary, like 

 man, eats almost anything he comes across that could 

 reasonably be considered edible. He belongs to a 

 group of birds which are structurally adapted to crack- 

 ing the hard coats of seeds. This group of birds known 

 as the finches is provided with the sort of bill familiar 

 in the ordinary canary bird. It is short, heavy at the 

 base, comes quickly to a point, and is firm and strong. 

 With it the bird readily breaks through the hard outer 

 coat of most seeds and feeds upon the rich cotyledons 

 that are enclosed within. Nowhere in its entire struc- 

 ture does the plant crowd so much nourishment in 

 little space as it does in the seeds. It is not by chan 



