EVIDENCE. — FROM EUROPEAN PUBLICATIONS. 331 



threshed out in April or March ; it has furnished clouds of Sparrows with food ever 

 since ; people have been moving the straw occasionally, which gives them fresh 

 ground to feed upon ; these things encourage Sparrows ; besides which, I believe 

 there are more horses in the country and more oats given them, and that is a never- 

 failing resource; they will never starve, winter or summer, so long as horses have 

 uncrushed oats. 



They give their young ones insects. I have saved the food of many hundreds of 

 Sparrows, and got it bottled [producing two bottles], that I may know precisely 

 what kinds of insects they eat, I should also like to know what species the martins eat. 

 I want the assistance of an expert entomologist here, but I can state generally that 

 out of three hundred and eighty-eight young Sparrows examined last year, of all 

 ages, from a great variety of places, chiefly from farms, but also from private houses, 

 wheat and green peas were found in them in considerable quantities ; the insects 

 were of two classes — caterpillars and coleopterous insects — but I found very few in- 

 sects that I knew well; I found one earwig, one grasshopper, a few hard-winged 

 beetles, but mostly soft beetles (I suspect they come out of the manure), and cater- 

 pillars in very variable quantities ; the very small young ones, up to three or four days 

 old, generally have caterpillars and little else, unless they have green peas. When 

 they get to the size of ''large callow," you will often find that they are fnll of wheat ; 

 the gizzard soon becomes hardened, and there is a great quantity of even ripe wheat. 

 Sometimes you find hardly any caterpillars, but a kind of black stuff. There are 

 different-sized insects of the beetle class, but soft. I find a great quantity of cole- 

 opterous insects also in the droppings under the martins' nests ; not the same species 

 probably, but the same class of insects. One catches them on the wing, whereas the 

 others catch them on the ground. One of these bottles holds the contents of the 

 stomachs of eighty-two young Sparrows taken recently, and this one of fifty-four old 

 Sparrows obtained last April; of more than one hundred examined at different times 

 in that month, only one contained an insect ; that one, two or three. I have not yet 

 found an insect in a Sparrow in autumn or winter. They can hardly do much good 

 to the farmer, for they do not frequent the fields to eat the insects unless they are 

 close to a house or road. You can see them destroy an acre of wheat sometimes, but 

 I am not aware of any counterbalancing advantage in the ground close to the roads 

 and the houses over places half a mile from a road or house where you never see a 

 Sparrow except about harvest time. 



The food differs very much, according to locality and according to the opportu- 

 nities. A farmer sent me a lot of young Sparrows, that I might examine the con- 

 tents of their stomachs ; they contained a good deal of wheat, a good deal of green 

 peas, and a fair sprinkling of insects. Only four days later he sent me another lot ; 

 there was still wheat, but no peas— insects were substituted: they were caterpillars. 

 I suppose the green peas had been grubbed up, and they had to hunt the caterpil- 

 lars ; but it was not very conclusive, because the man had two farms a mile apart. 

 He told me that he believed they came from both farms; but that made it a little 

 less pointed than it would have been. I could not get at it by inquiry ; I did not 

 get to see the boy who took them, but it looked as if they ate peas as long as they 

 could get them, and then they got caterpillars. You will find that there are more 

 caterpillars at the top than at the bottom of this bottle, because the contents of the 

 youngest birds are at* the top. 



I do not know how many days after hatching the young beginto eat wheat; when 

 I was a boy I might have been able to tell you how many days each size of callow 

 bird represented. What I call a large callow bird generally contains a good deal 

 of wheat. I should say three days old is the date, but it is a mere guess. As their 

 whole growth is completed in a fortnight, it can not take many days. .The large 

 callow birds contain more food than the f nil-feathered ones; the gizzard alters 

 very curiously in shape and size, and as they grow to full size it contracts again. 

 As to breeding, I can not tell exactly, but my recollection of tha time when I used to 



