The Zoologist— October, 1867. 945 



flail. No amount of shooting, shouting or rattling is of the slightest 

 avail to ward off the pertinacious attacks of the enemy. If driven from 

 one spot they go to some other part of the field, and at last scarcely 

 notice any attempts to drive them away. It has often been urged in 

 defence of the sparrow that although, to a certain extent, they commit 

 depredations on our corn crop, they make ample compensation by 

 destroying those insects and their larvae which otherwise would over- 

 run our fields. In this district, however, where the farms and fields 

 are extensive, and the homesteads isolated, we never see sparrows in 

 the fields excepting at that season when the grain is there. When 

 the corn is carried into the yards the sparrows follow, and hang about 

 the premises till the succeeding crop calls them abroad again. During 

 the dry season of 1864 my garden was infested with caterpillars and 

 everything was more or less destroyed ; the gooseberry and currant 

 bushes stripped of their leaves. The plantations and shrubberies round 

 this garden are the chosen haunts of hundreds of sparrows; and here, 

 as they are never disturbed, they pass an idle, happy life. In return 

 for this forbearance on my part I fondly trusted they would speedily 

 rid me of my enemies, the caterpillars ; but no, — 



" wretched set of sparrows, one and all, — 



although they perched and chattered by hundreds in the trees almost 

 overhanging my currant-bushes, they never to my knowledge, and I 

 was constantly on the look out, attempted either to clear fruit-trees or 

 garden from the destroyers. Much has of late years been both written 

 and spoken in praise of the useful and honest sparrow. Like many 

 another popular cry it may be overdone. He has his good points, and 

 he has his faults, and not small ones either. 



Brownheaded Gull. — During fine weather if these gulls are noisy, 

 assemble in large flocks, fly round in circles, rising by a spiral flight, 

 column-like, often to an immense height, it is an unfailing indication of 

 rain within four-and-twenty hours. To-day (September 9th) I counted 

 more than fifty of these gulls hawking, after the manner of swallows, 

 for the crane-fly ; myriads of these awkward and ungainly insects 

 were drifting, impelled by a steady S.VV. wind, over the marshes. 



Ringed Dotterel. — Observed a small flock of six on some fallow land 

 on the 27th of July, the pioneers of the autumn flocks. Hundreds of 

 these little fellows made their appearance in the first week in August. 

 These flocks contained an unusual number of dunlins. 



SECOND SERIES— VOL. II. 3 H 



