Notices of New Books. 



8501 



asking they would not trouble themselves to search farther ; but obliged 

 as they are to provide for themselves, they must content themselves 

 with humble fare ; and so skilful are they as caterers that whatever 

 other birds may chance to die of starvation, a sparrow is always round 

 and plump, while not a few have paid for their voracity by their lives. 

 Much difference of opinion exists as to whether sparrows should be 

 courted by man as allies or exterminated as enemies. The fact that 

 great efforts are at the present time being made to introduce them into 

 New Zealand, where the corn crops suffer great injury from the attacks 

 of insects, which the presence of sparrows would, it is believed, mate- 

 rially check, leads to the conclusion that their mission is one of utility. 

 That sparrows consume a very large quantity of corn in summer there 

 can be no doubt ; as soon as the grain has attained its full size, and 

 long before it is ripe, they make descents on the standing corn, and, 

 if undisturbed, will clear so effectually of their contents the ears nearest 

 to the hedges that this portion of the crop is sometimes scarcely worth 

 the threshing. During harvest they transfer their attention to the 

 sheaves, while the reapers and binders are occupied elsewhere. As 

 gleaners they are indefatigable ; they participate too in the joys of 

 harvest home, for their food is then brought to their very doors. The 

 most skilful binder leaves at least a few ears exposed at the wrong end 

 of the sheaf, and these are searched for diligently in the rick ; and the 

 barns must be well closed indeed into which they cannot find admission. 

 At threshings and winnowings they are constant attendants, feeding 

 among the poultry, and snatching up the scattered grains under the 

 formidable beak of chanticleer himself. At seed time their depreda- 

 tions are still more serious, as they now come in not simply for a share 

 of the produce, but undermine the very foundations of the future crop. 

 I once had the curiosity to examine the crop of a sparrow which had 

 been shot as it flew up from a newly-sown field, and found no less 

 than forty-two grains of wheat. A writer in the ' Zoologist,' who pro- 

 fesses himself a deadly enemy of the sparrow, states that he once 

 took one hundred and eighty grains of good wheat from the crops of 

 five birds, giving an average of thirty-six for a meal. Now if sparrows 

 had the opportunity of feeding on grain all the year round they would 

 be unmitigated pests, and a war of extermination against them could 

 not be waged too vigorously : but during the far greater portion of 

 the year they have not the power of doing mischief, and all this time 

 they have to find food for themselves. Against their will, perhaps, 

 they now hunt for the seeds of various weeds, and these being smaller 

 than grains of corn and less nutritive they consume an immense 



