36 SIR PETER EADE ON “ MY CITY GARDEN.” 
Cyprus, sandy, grey and white, and almost all intermediate shades. 
And it is certainly curious to watch the manifestations of their 
loves and their hates, their friendliness and their jealousies, their 
sunny enjoyments and their predatory instincts, and their methods 
of attack and defence. These latter, though often very noisy, 
by no means necessarily consist in open fighting, but are very 
commonly carried on by what Mr. C. Morris calls the “ mentality 
of latter-day life. These hostile cats (as you have probably observed) 
will very constantly settle their relative superiority, not by biting 
and scratching, or actual fighting, but by what is actually a ‘ staring 
match,’ in which the influence of mind over matter is well 
demonstrated. They place themselves a few feet apart, and stare 
at each other, until one of them confesses himself beaten, by 
slowly backing away from his opponent, and then suddenly 
turning round and running away. This is a form of duelling 
which might well be copied in human life ; and, still more, 
might properly be adopted in the case of nations, where ‘ mental ’ 
arbitration, from a steady calculation of strength, would take the 
place of bullets and bayonets. 
As with Cats, so with Sparrows, it may be said that they are 
constant friends that are always with us. Yet though so common, 
they are a never failing source of interest in a city garden, if only 
because they always provide some conspicuous life and motion ; 
and in mine, because they may nearly always he heard chirping 
or quarrelling in the ivy, which covers so much of the garden walls. 
I am sorry that Miss Ormerod gives them such a bad character 
as to their appetites. But not being personally engaged in agriculture, 
I can only rejoice that nature has provided them with such strong 
constitutions, and healthy and active digestions. Beyond this, it 
is certainly a pleasure to a townsman to note their chatterings, 
their amicable, if noisy, contentions for the best places in the ivy, 
their demonstrative courtships, their dust-baths in the dry ground, 
or their water-baths in the pans provided for them for this purpose, 
and their evident love for the neighbourhood and companionship 
(at a properly-regulated distance) of mankind. 
What a contrast there is between the active, fluttering, often 
noisy House Sparrow, and its quiet, retiring, and gentle-mannered 
neighbour, the Hedge Sparrow. 
This was well illustrated in the early part of last December, in 
