Nature's Militia 325 



merey and leads the life of an outlaw. Sparrow clubs, 

 encouraged by the farmers, kill him by the thousand 

 and destroy his nests. 



That he is mischievous no one can deny, and that 

 he sometimes does serious damage must be admitted 

 even by his warmest admirers. But if we cannot have 

 our crops without paying toll upon them, it seems 

 better to share with the sparrow than lose all to the 

 grub — the only choice, according to some, which lies 

 before us. 



The sparrow's friends, the naturalists, say that each 

 sparrow actually saves a bushel of corn, for he himself 

 lives for nine months of the year almost entirely on 

 grubs, while his family eat absolutely nothing but 

 insect food as long as they remain in the nest. One 

 pair of sparrows, it is said, take 4,300 grubs or other 

 insects to their young in the course of a week ; and that 

 they are the deadly enemies of the cockchafers, which 

 have done a million pounds' worth of damage to the 

 crops in Normandy, is evident, for the wing-cases of 

 700 cockchafers have been found under a single nest. 



Finally, we are told that caterpillars to the number 

 of 354,375,000,000 are eaten by sparrows every year, 

 and that while we see the damage which the sparrow 

 does during three months of the year, we do not see 

 how hard he works for us during the other nine, or 

 what far greater damage he averts from us. We grudge 

 his wages, in fact, simply because we do not under- 

 stand how vast are his services. 



But a few facts are worth many arguments. Let us 

 see what has followed the expulsion of the sparrow in 

 one or two cases. Frederick the Great of Prussia 

 waged war against the sparrow, and — he was defeated, 



