74 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
sociability. One robin may nest in the yines about 
your porch. If there were room for a dozen, scarcely 
more than one would be likely to use it, because he 
would drive away any other robin who attempted to 
share the neighborhood with him. To the sparrow 
company is always in order. While he may quarrel 
from morning until night with his fellow, it is a so- 
ciable quarrel and neither would willingly forego it. 
This union is strength among birds, as with man. 
Every animal is safer from his enemies when he can 
have the constant presence of others of his own kind. 
The deer that stays in the herd is safer from the 
wolves. It is only when the latter succeed in cutting 
out some weaker or less sagacious animal that these 
carnivorous creatures succeed in tearing down their 
prey. I think the superiority of the sparrow over 
most of our common birds, when considered as a city 
dweller, is scarcely understood. Because he had won 
in the race with other birds is no necessary indication 
that he warred directly against them. Birdmen often 
attribute to him a quarrelsome disposition, as if he 
actually drove other birds away. It almost seems 
like animosity against the sparrow to speak of him as 
attacking blackbirds and crows. It is a cowardly crow 
who can be driven away by a sparrow, and if the two 
cannot live together it seems to me certainly to the 
discredit of the crow and not of the sparrow. I be- 
