THE HOUSE-SPARROW. 37 



their habit of being more insectivorous birds, especially 

 during the breeding season. 



The sparrows are often classed with the finches, and also 

 with the grossbeaks ; and, indeed, the scientific distinctions 

 of many of the birds with hard and strong conical bills, 

 which eat insects when they can procure them, and seeds and 

 other farinaceous and albuminous parts of vegetables when 

 insects cannot be had, are by no means clear. In the form 

 of their beaks, the sparrows hold an intermediate place; 

 their bills being thicker in proportion to the length, and 

 more curved in the culmen above and in the outline of the 

 lower mandible, than in the finches, but less so in both parti- 

 culars than the grossbeaks. 



There are two British species, the house-sparrow and the 

 tree-sparrow ; the former found in all parts of the country, 

 but never far from human habitations, and the other rather 

 thinly distributed, and avoiding the neighbourhood of vil- 

 lages and towns, though choosing places in which it can find 

 insects for the supply of its brood. 



THE HOUSE-SPARROW (Pyrgita domesticd). 



The sparrow needs no description, being found in all places 

 and at all seasons, though less commonly in bleak and ex- 

 posed places than in those that are low and sheltered. They 

 do some harm to small seeds when newly sown, to these and 

 to patches of grain when early ripe, in the neighbourhood of 

 villages and towns, and also, at certain seasons, to the buds 

 of shrubs and trees ; but upon the whole, they do much more 

 good, by the numbers of insects and caterpillars which they 

 destroy. It is the house-fly, as well as the thatch, and the 

 eaves and holes in the roof, that brings them so much about 

 dwellings ; and in the consumption of these, as well as of 

 crumbs and other refuse, they are most notable and inde- 

 fatigable scavengers. But for them, the house-flies would, in 



