Birds. 7735 



emigrated ; but after two years not only were there no more cherries but 

 scarcely any other sort of fruit — the caterpillars ate them all up, and 

 the great king, victor on so many fields of battle, was happy, at the 

 cost of a few cherries, to sign peace with the reconciliated sparrows.* 

 Moreover, M. Florent Prevost has shown that, according to circum- 

 stances, insects form at least one-half — often in a much larger propor- 

 tion — the food of the sparrow. It is exclusively with insects that this 

 bird feeds its young brood ; here is a remarkable instance : — At Paris, 

 where, nevertheless, the fragments of our own food provide abundant 

 aliment for the sparrow, two of those birds having made their nest on 

 a terrace of the Rue Vivienne, the elytra of the cockchaffers 

 thrown out of the nest were collected ; they numbered 1400. 

 Thus one little household had destroyed 700 cockchaffers to feed 

 one single brood. f 



" Let us add, in favour of the discharge of this culprit, that the 

 sparrow has become almost domesticated, inasmuch as he only lives 

 near the domiciles of man, and, perhaps, like him, has been corrupted 

 by excess of civilization. 



"At Montville (Seine Tnferieure) rooks had been doomed. It was 

 soon found that their ravages could uot be compared to those they 

 prevented, and the rook was honourably re-established. J 



" Class 3. If the sparrows and the rooks make us pay for their 

 services, there are other birds — and they are far more numerous — 

 which render us gratuitous services. They are, first of all, the nocturnal 

 birds of prey, as bats, barn-owls and others,§ which ignorance foolishly 

 persecutes as birds of evil omen. Agriculturists ought to bless them, 

 for, ten times better than the best cats, and without threatening the 

 larder like them, the birds of this order wage a determined war against 

 rats and mice, so detrimental to stacked corn or grain in barns, and 

 destroy in the fields hosts of field-mice, moles and dormice, which 

 without these night hunters would become an intolerable scourge. || 



"* Tschudi, already quoted, p. 19. 



" f A fact verbally stated to the reporter by M. Florent Prevost. See, moreover, 

 M. Chatel, ' TJtilite et Rehabilitation du Moineau (Angers, 1858); M. Dupont, in the 

 ' Transactions of the Royal Society ;' ' Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimatation de Nancy,' 

 1859, p. 356. 



" J Baron Dumast, ' Extrait du Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimatation de Nancy,* 

 1857, pp. 10 and II. 



"§ Baron Dumast, ' Extrait du Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimatation de Nancy,' 

 1857, pp. 10 and 11. 



" II Gloger, in the work already quoted, p. 301, relates that in 1857, on a property 

 near Breslau, in Silesia, 200,000 mice were caught in one week. A manufacturer 



