Fringillidce. 



capture of a fox, a groat for a polecat, and an occasional sixpence 

 given to a sailor, seem to have formed the principal part of the 

 church expenses of the good parish of Yatesbury for above 100 

 years so lightly did the Church-rate sit upon our forefathers ! 

 and this continued to within forty years ago, when my pre- 

 decessor considered Sparrow-killing scarcely a legitimate Church 

 expense. Now I am not about to deny that Sparrows are mis- 

 chievous, or to inveigh against their destruction, which I suppose 

 to a certain extent is rendered necessary ; but I would observe, 

 first of all, that they are not wholly inimical to man, for (like 

 most, if not all, of their fellows) they feed their young altogether 

 on caterpillars and insects, as may readily be granted if we con- 

 sider how unfitted must be the callow young at that early stage 

 of their existence to digest seeds or corn. And again, I would 

 observe that the cause of their immoderate abundance is the 

 indiscriminate extermination of all our birds of prey, useful and 

 mischievous alike, at the hands of the gamekeepers and others ; 

 for I contend that, were Nature allowed to preserve her own 

 balance, we should not witness the extinction of one species and 

 the enormous increase of another, to the manifest injury of our 

 Fauna. And with reference to the foregoing remarks, before 

 taking leave of the above-named Churchwardens' accounts, I 

 would make two observations which strike me in perusing its 

 pages, viz., the great abundance of foxes, polecats, and such like 

 vermin, and the paucity of Sparrows 100 years ago, as compared 

 with later entries ; for whereas in the middle of the last century 

 4 foxes, 6 polecats, and 30 dozen Sparrows seem to have been the 

 annual tale of the slain, at the beginning of the present century 

 2 foxes, 1 polecat, and 60 dozen Sparrows form the average sum- 

 total. But the last entry recording such items, viz. A.D. LS40, 

 shows that whereas foxes and polecats are exterminated from 

 the parish, as far as their persecution by Church-rate is con- 

 cerned,, no less than 178 dozen Sparrows met with an untimely 

 end in that year ; proving that notwithstanding the persecution 

 raised against them, Sparrows still increase upon us, and have 

 enormously increased since the universal destruction of so many 



