The House-Sparrow. 



339 



The only bird likely to be mistaken for the house-sparrow is 

 its near relative the tree-sparrow {Passer montanus, L.). The 

 latter is a much rarer and more locally distributed species, 

 somewhat smaller in size, with two white bars across its wings 

 instead of one as in the house-sparrow. The male house-sparrow 

 has a white patch on its cheek or side of its head ; in the tree- 

 sparrow the white cheek has a black triangular patch on it. 



To practical farmers who are not concerned with speculations 

 on the possible deleterious effects of an interference with the 

 " balance of nature," the case for the reduction of the sparrow to 

 smaller numbers than exist at present rests upon an estimate 

 of the damage done, compared with the useful work carried on by 

 the bird. 



It may be taken for granted that no one wishes to exterminate 

 the sparrow altogether, but it is the opinion of all who have 

 paid any attention to the subject, that the limits of the sparrow's 

 usefulness have long ago been overstepped and its reduction to 

 more reasonable numbers is as necessary in the interests of the 

 community at large, as the reduction of a superabundance of 

 rats, or any other destructive beast, bird, or insect. 



Hundreds of examinations of the contents of the stomachs of 

 sparrows have been made in this country and abroad, and it has 

 been shown that from 75 to 80 per cent, of the food of adult 

 birds throughout the whole year consists of cultivated grain 

 of some sort. To a farmer in the neighbourhood of a town or 

 village where the bird has been unmolested, this fact is forcibly 

 brought home to him in much diminished crops. In such districts, 

 the profitable cultivation of cereals soon becomes impossible 

 and several years' observation and experience in the cultivation 

 of experimental plots of varieties of grain has convinced me 

 that no results of value can be obtained near villages where the 

 sparrow has been allowed to multiply unchecked, especially if the 

 areas cultivated are isolated from the larger arable fields. 



In one parish with which I am acquainted over 28,000 

 sparrows were killed in three seasons by members of the Sparrow 

 Club. It does not need special emphasis to convince any- 

 one acquainted with the habits of the bird, that the maintenance 

 of such a number as this must seriously interfere with the 

 profitable cultivation of cereal crops. 



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