112 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
Pemphigus bursarius. Purse-like galls on the foot-stalks of the 
leaves of Poplars. 
Schizoneura ULMi. Causes the leaf of the Elm to swell, turn 
pale, and curve. 
Other galls formed by Phytopti, or of which the maker was 
unknown, were also found, but the above may suffice for a first list. 
All the above galls, for which no locality is given, were found 
in or near Aylsham. 
Since writing the above list 1 have received from Mundesley the 
small “blister like” galls of Cecidomyia galii on the Yellow 
Bedstraw, Galium verum. 
XY. 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
A Plea for the House Sparrow. — Amongst the many 
delinquencies of the Sparrow — and they are many — it is alleged 
that it does no good to the farmer ; but this is, I think, a mistake. 
Mr. Gurney, in his pamphlet ‘ On the Misdeeds of the House 
Sparrow’ ( Passer domesticus), published in 1887, ably and for the 
most part accurately stating the case pro and con ; says p. 3 : “ Can 
any one else, who wishes to speak on behalf of the Sparrows, 
produce any evidence of their feeding — not occasionally but 
habitually — in any locality in the United Kingdom, on the Wire- 
worm or on the Larva of the Gamma Moth or Cranefly l ” Although 
‘ One Swallow does not make a summer,’ and although a single 
instance may not come under Mr. Gurney’s heading of ‘ habitually 
feeding’ on W T ireworms — there is, I think, sufficient evidence that 
the enquiry was altogether inadequate to settle this point, and that 
a more minute and different mode of enquiry is needed. 
It is now very many years since, during my boyhood, I was 
examining a nest of young Sparrows in a spout, and Avas astonished 
to find in the nest some thirty or forty Wireworms of varying 
sizes. They had evidently been brought to feed the young birds, 
and had been dropped in the process. They had been clearly 
obtained from an adjoining garden which had been recently dug 
