422 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ranged along a wide band of country from Dover to Aberdeen, I 

 only find three replies favourable to sparrow help, and one of 

 these couched in doubtful language. On the other side, it was 

 mentioned that the sparrows were occupied with early oats, and 

 had no time to spare for caterpillars ; also the sparrows and 

 smaller birds preferred the barley ; and that the sparrows were 

 too numerous, and were against the swallows.* (E. A. 0.) 



The above notes are only brought forward to show that, in- 

 dependently of the sparrow (which is often brought forward as 

 if our safety from insect ravage lay in the keeping of this one 

 species), we are excellently supplied with a watchful and efficient 

 bird-police, able and willing to take the insect robbers of our 

 orchards and gardens in charge, and helpful, without raising undue 

 levies for the supply of overwhelmingly increasing progeny, and 

 without dispossessing far better tenants from their houses. 



The rapid rate of increase of the sparrow is one of the 

 reasons why protection places us in such a difficult position in 

 saving our crops from its ravage. One pair of these birds fre- 

 quently produces nearly twenty young ones in the season, three 

 nests with five or six eggs in each being stated to be not unusual; 

 and a very little calculation will show that in a few years, where 

 no disaster betides them, the progeny of one single pair will 

 amount to millions, as evidenced by the rapidity with which the 

 small number imported have spread over the United States, 

 Australia, and New Zealand. 



We have evidence of the broad-scale losses caused by intro- 

 duction of the sparrow, in the devastations brought about by 

 its introduction into the United States, Canada, and Australia ; 

 and we have evidence in our own country of the saving of crops 

 and restoration of helpful birds by systematic destruction of this 

 one kind ; but we have no reliable records of injurious effects 

 being caused by enforced banishment or destruction of the 

 sparrow. 



For many years mention has been made, by those who con- 

 sider sparrow preservation desirable, of great disasters following 

 on some not clearly detailed methods of extermination or ex- 



* Injury by sparrow devastation is a constantly recurring matter brought 

 before me, and by way of one special observation I had a record in 1884 

 from Mr. Gaskell, then Secretary of the Wirrall Farmers' Club, Birkenhead, 

 that " the judges of our farm crops estimated the damage done by sparrows 

 to be one-third in some districts they judged crops in." 



