912 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY 
speedily adopted. Proofs of its destructive habits were cited from 
rd authors, showing that the bird had been the paiana 
enemy of mankind for more than five thousand years. When writin 
was invented the Rip was selected for the hinsoaly phie cuca. 
ter signifying enem 
“ Sonnini, in the Tee Histoire Naturelle, published in 1817, 
says :— 
“t Sparrows are impudent parasites, Todal ai m society with n man and dividing with 
his grain, his fruit, and his home; they pens, the grain as it 
approaches: maturity, and even shat whieh has been stored in granaries, Some writers 
i by them compensated for their ravages 
on grain; eighty-two gajos of hka were counted in the eade fa sparrow eop by the 
writer, and Rougi my, 
estimates that an pekti of France consume annually ten million bushels of wheat. 
«Jardine says that a price is set on their heads because of their se- 
vere depredations on grain and garden seed, and Valmont-Bomare 
makes a similar statement in his Dictionary. 
“That their destructive propensities were popularly known in Erg- 
land is shown by Cowper’s sate :— 
“<The sparrow: and quit the sheltering eaves 
To pia toe wine prde wen they eye 
* Ag red nd thic ace resolved 
Sirro a mpending na > often scared 
As oft return, a pert, voracious “kind?” 
native insectivorous birds, including the Crow and Robin 
aige and insects, than he loses by their fondness for grains and 
If we destroy the balance of nature, and cause a diaproper- 
or taea the number of insectivorous birds and their insect food, 
we shall certainly suficr from the increase of obnoxious insects. 
UTRINE EA 
GEOLOGY. 
ANCE OF GEOLOGICAL Scrence. — In his inaugural address, the 
President (W. R. Grove) of the British Association stated that most 
geologists of the present day, instead of holding that the breaks or 
mation of the earth’s crust, adopt the iemsires that they arise from 
dislocations occasioned since the original deposition of strata, or from 
gradual shifting of the areas of a that the advance of 
the ne 
of admitting unlimited modification of species 
would seem to have arisen comparison of the extreme ends 
Se re ee einen nn or some of them, were 
‘wanting. 
