944 The Zoologist — October, 1867. 



not very appropriate ones as regards safety, are taken up by small 

 colonies of rooks, the spare population from the large overstocked 

 rookeries. 



Starling. — There is no bird of greater service to the farmer than the 

 starling. One starling will in a single day devour an almost incredible 

 quantity of noxious insects and grubs inimical to the labours of the 

 agriculturist: I never open them without finding insects in their 

 stomachs. Great complaints have this season been made of the injury 

 done to the pea-crop by Aphides : in this neighbourhood I know of 

 only one exception, a thirteen-acre field, containing a very fine and 

 promising crop. This field was no sooner attacked by the fly than it 

 became the resort of many thousands of starlings, and here they 

 remained from early morning till evening, day by day, for several 

 weeks, industriously picking off and devouring the plague of green 

 flies which threatened to destroy the crop, a result at one time 

 apparently inevitable. The usual cautious habits of the bird were for 

 a time laid aside : when disturbed they arose with evident reluctance, 

 alighting again almost directly. It would have been no easy task to 

 have driven them from the field. The combined action of all these 

 small birds did at last effect what no power or exertion of man could 

 possibly have accomplished, namely, keeping under, and in great part 

 destroying, these myriads of insects, which otherwise, in the short 

 space of a kw days, would have prevented all progress to maturity in 

 the plants. I entirely attribute the preservation of this crop of peas 

 to my little friends the starlings. 



Sparrow. — I wish I could give the sparrow as good a character as 

 the starling. Independent, however, of all we read about him, and the 

 service he renders the farmer in destroying grubs and insects, and the 

 solicitude expressed by the Acclimatisation Societies for his introduc- 

 tion into the Colonies, and the high price they are willing to pay for 

 his importation, I still think that here at home in England he is not 

 quite so honest as his admirers fancy ; that, in fact, he may not 

 unjustly be designated the enemy of mankind. My opinion of him is 

 that he will never touch any other food when he can procure grain. 

 The annual damage done by sparrows to the ripening corn crop 

 throughout England must be enormous. A learned Frenchman, 

 Rougier de la Bergerie, estimates that the sparrows of France consume 

 every year ten million bushels of wheat. It is not alone what they eat, 

 but the quantity knocked out from the ripening heads, till for acres 

 together the crop has the appearance of having been thrashed with a 



