USEFUL OR HARMFUL? 13 



trees to digest the meal, and you will find the pellets 

 formed by the birds of the indigestible portions bones 

 and fur in and about their nesting-holes. Harmful 

 moths and beetles they also kill. 



And so the Owls barn, the tawny or wood-owl, the 

 long and the short-eared which in England are the only 

 common species, are undoubtedly the agriculturalists* 

 good friends, and indeed friends of the whole human 

 race; and many landowners now prohibit the use of the 

 cruel pole-trap in their destruction. Richard JefTeries 

 tells how 200 owls were taken in one pole-trap in a 

 plantation of young fir in his time. Dr. Altum, a great 

 mover in the cause of bird-protection, examined 210 of 

 the wood-owl's pellets and found in these the remains 

 of 6 rats, 42 mice, 2<j6 voles, 33 shrews, 48 moles, 

 1 8 birds and 48 beetles, besides a countless number of 

 cockchafers. 



And what can you find to say in favour of the 

 Sparrow ? I fancy I hear many a reader ask, that 

 ubiquitous bird whose impudence is everywhere 

 proverbial. When sparrows in hosts settle down on 

 the corn waiting to be harvested, not only filling their 

 crops but uselessly beating the grain out of the ears, the 

 case is bad, and it is hard then to recall all the good the 

 same birds had done in devouring the seeds of harmful 

 weeds, such as wild mustard, etc. also to think of the 

 cockchafers in the grub as well as winged daddy-long- 

 legs, caterpillars, turnip-moth, grubs of cabbage-moth 

 and butterfly, and the moths of both currant and goose- 

 berry. In towns, too, the sparrow is invaluable as a 

 street scavenger. House-flies, those plagues indoors, 

 maggots of fleas, eggs of cockroaches, spiders, centi- 

 pedes, all, and many other " small deer " that infest 



