72 BOMBAY DUCKS 
farthing ?’ and in Aristophanes even seven are offered 
for an obole. His dirty colour, his brown jacket, his 
reddish-brown head and sooty cheeks, his dumpy figure, 
his bustly flight, gait, voice, demeanour—in short, all 
betray his low birth and vulgar mind. 
“But the Pariah avenges himself on the society which 
has expelled him by his truly cynical shameless- 
ness, ... The sparrow is an Atheos, a wild Communist, 
but shrewd, active, and untiring. ... When the bold 
vagabond has fixed himself anywhere neither force nor 
cunning is able to turn him out. Not in vain has he 
associated with men, and learned from them craft and 
wickedness. It is not easy to scare this paragon of 
audacity, or to inspire him with respect. He is more 
than a sceptic; he is a decided freethinker. In pre- 
sumptuous security, he seats himself on the nose or arm 
of the fluttering, clappering ghost, to whom the charge 
of the garden is committed. In its very shadow he 
bids it defiance, and thus, it may be said, enjoys the 
fruit of his wickedness with a heightened consciousness 
of his transgression. If he has happily escaped from a 
net or a pea-shooter, he makes a tremendous outcry ; 
jeers at and abuses the awkward fowler from his hiding- 
place, and anon the whole scoundrelly fraternity chime 
in with all the power of their lungs,” 
This was, of course, written of the sparrow as he is 
found in Europe. The Indian bird, although he belongs 
to the same species—Passer domesticus—can give his 
Western cousin points in the matter of evil-doing. 
“London sparrows,” writes Lockwood Kipling, “are 
said to be familiar, but when compared with their 
