76 BOMBAY DUCKS 
by all means let it do so. That is not the site I should 
have selected for a habitation, were I a bird, but that is 
neither here nor there ; if the dirty, dark hole meets 
with the approval of the sparrow, let it bring up its 
family in it. It is only when the parents insult me 
every time they enter or leave the nest, that I begin to 
grow angry with the birds. 
I naturally ask what I have done that they should 
wake me every morning before sunrise, and, in the 
course of the day, hurl at me all the swear-words they 
know. 
All sparrows behave thus, but, just as the Madras 
crow is more impudent than any other crow, so does the 
insolence of the Madras sparrow exceed the insolence of 
every other sparrow, not excepting the London bird. 
I am not exaggerating when I say that the sparrows 
once evicted me from an hotel. I will not name the 
hostel, for I do not consider that it deserves an adver- 
tisement. It must suffice that the roof of the rooms 
occupied by me had in its structure a number of iron 
rafters provided with ledges, Upon these the sparrows 
held shouting matches. 
And “what a dissonance is the sparrow’s tone! Of all 
the Babel confusion of bird tongues, there are few more 
displeasing than this. All the boorish vulgarity of his 
nature is expressed in that tone!” 
Well, I had to listen the whole day, not to one spar- 
row, but to a large colony, and, judging by the uproar, 
envy, hatred, malice, falsehood, deceit, and jealousy 
reigned in that colony. I was awakened in the morn- 
ing—my first in Madras—to find that the crows had 
