EXOTIC BIRDS FOB BRITAIN, 
103 
gardens, hedges, hamlets, towns — everywhere there 
is the same running, rippling sound of the omni- 
present sparrow, and it becomes monotonous at 
last. We have too much of the sparrow. But we 
are to blame for that. He is the unskilled worker 
that Nature has called in to do the work of skilled 
hands, which we have foolishly turned away. He 
is willing enough to take it all on himself; his 
energy is great ; he bungles away without ceasing ; 
and being one of a joyous temperament, he whistles 
and sinofs in his tuneless fashion at his work, until, 
like the grasshopper of Ecclesiastes, he becomes a 
burden. For how tiring are the sight and sound 
of grasshoppers when one journeys many miles and 
sees them incessantly rising like a sounding cloud 
before his horse, and hears their shrill notes all day 
from the wayside ! Yet how pleasant to listen to 
their minstrelsy in the green summer foliage, where 
they are not too abundant ! We can have too 
much of anything, however charming it may be in 
itself. Those who live where scores of humming- 
birds are perpetually dancing about the garden 
flowers find that the eye grows weary of seeing the 
daintiest forms and brightest colours and liveliest 
motions that birds exhibit. We are told that 
Edward the Confessor grew so sick of the incessant 
singing of nightingales in the forest of Havering- 
at-Bower that he prayed to Heaven to silence their 
