course, toward Cambridge and Charlestown. 

 Not more than one in a hundred flew south 

 across the city. 



Of course there are sparrows all over Boston. 

 There is no street too narrow, too noisy, too 

 dank with the smell of leather for them. They 

 seem as numerous where the rush of drays is 

 thickest as in the open breathing-places where 

 the fountains play. They are in every quarter, 

 yet those to the east and south of the old burial- 

 ground do not belong to the roost. Perhaps 

 they have graveyards of their own in their sec- 

 tions, though I have been unable to find them. 

 So far as I know, this is the only roost in or 

 about Boston. And this is the stranger since so 

 few of the total number of the Boston sparrows 

 sleep here. A careful estimate showed me that 

 there could .not have been more than six or 

 seven thousand in the roost. One would almost 

 say there were as many millions in Boston. 

 And where do these millions sleep? For the 

 most part, each one alone behind his sign-board 

 or shutter near his local feeding-grounds. 



I^Tow, why should the sparrows of the roost 

 prefer King's Chapel Burial Ground to the Old 

 [103] 



