ORDER PASSERES. 241 



them still more pernicious to the agriculturist, for they also 

 devour bees. It appears, therefore, to be erroneous, as some 

 writers on rural economy assert, that the number of insects 

 destroyed by sparrows, compensates for the devastations they 

 commit on grain and fruit. 



These birds, harsh as it may seem to say so, do little but 

 evil to man during their lives, and are of no use to him after 

 their death. Their flesh is hard and bitter, and the medi- 

 cinal properties which were anciently attributed, to some of 

 their parts, are merely imaginary. 



Rougier de la Bergerie, a French writer on rural eco- 

 nomy, has made an approximative calculation of what the 

 sparrows cost, annually, to France. If their number be 

 reduced merely to ten millions, a reduction much below the 

 reality, it follows, that each of them eating a bushel of grain, 

 weighing twenty pounds, ten millions of bushels will thus be 

 withdrawn from the consumption and commerce of men ; 

 and, only reckoning the price of a bushel to be twenty sous, 

 no less a sum than ten millions of francs per annum, will be 

 withdrawn from agricultural produce. This calculation of 

 an able agriculturist is confirmed by observation. The 

 quantity of grain eaten by these birds, may be easily ascer- 

 tained by those who bring them up in cages ; and M. Sonnini, 

 from whom we borrow these observations, says, that he found 

 two-and-twenty grains of wheat in the stomach of a sparrow 

 just killed. 



It is proper, however, to hear the other side of the ques- 

 tion, and see what can be said in favour of the sparrow. 

 A countryman of our own, Mr. Bradley, in his General Trea- 

 tise on Husbandry and Gardening, shows, that a pair of spar- 

 rows, during the time they have their young ones to feed, 

 destroy, on an average, every week, about three thousand 

 three hundred and sixty caterpillars. This calculation was 

 founded on actual observation. He discovered that the two 



VOL. VII. R 



