Nature's Militia 327 



destroyed. Vigorous efforts were made to fight the 

 enemy, but all was in vain, and the terrible and unusual 

 increase in their numbers was ascribed by some of the 

 wiser farmers to the wholesale slaughter of sparrows. 



Of course sparrows, as well as chaffinches, bullfinches, 

 linnets and others, eat some amount of grain (though 

 not necessarily the farmer's), especially when insects 

 are scarce ; and sometimes, no doubt, they take more 

 fruit than the owner cares to spare them. Nothing is 

 perfect ; but without the birds there would be no crops 

 at all, which would surely be the greater evil; and 

 besides eating as much insect as vegetable food during 

 the summer, which even the grain-feeders do, it is also 

 a fact that the seeds which they chiefly eat are those 

 of wild plants producing such superabundant crops, 

 that they would overrun and choke other vegetation, if 

 there were not some check to their increase. No less 

 than 321 chickweed seeds, for instance, were found in 

 the crop of one sparrow. 



Other birds eat large quantities of burdock, plantain, 

 groundsel, and thistle-seed ; and without their help we 

 can see, from the state of things in Australia, how 

 rampant and unmanageable these plants, with their 

 easily-dispersed seeds, might become. 



Pigeons are the only birds which live on nothing but 

 vegetable-food ; yet the wood-pigeon is now recognised 

 as such a valuable servant in Belgium, from its habit 

 of eating the seeds of the poppy, spurge and others, 

 which no domestic animal can touch, that it is strictly 

 preserved. Where such seeds are not to be had in 

 sufficient quantities, no doubt the pigeon makes up for 

 it by stealing peas and corn, but the Belgians seem to 

 have made up their minds that it is better to run the 



