nOUSE-SPAllKOW. 
99 
as elsewhere to consider its right to food and property at least 
equal to that of mankind. In autumn it gathers into large 
hocks, doing great damage to the ripening oats and barley, — no 
wheat is cultivated in Shetland, — and I think this is the only 
crime we can lay to its charge, except that it frustrates every 
attempt to rear gooseberries ; for though the blossom forms 
well, no sooner is the fruit the size of a mustard-seed than the 
Sparrows devour it, seldom leaving as many as a dozen berries 
among as many bushes. 
It would be futile to here enter into the controversy as to 
the expediency of exterminating or encouraging certain species 
of birds. Nothing but the temperate and deliberate considera- 
tion of an accumulation of well-authenticated facts will ever 
solve the dijBQculty. The following, however, seems worthy 
of record. About fifteen years ago, the little village of Dale, 
in IJnst, was much infested with Sparrows, which, breeding 
abundantly in every possible situation, yearly assembled in 
large flocks at the time of the ripening of the corn. A newly- 
arriv^ed Methodist preacher, a Londoner, observing this, at once 
proceeded to explain to the inhabitants the nature of “ Sparrow 
clubs,” and to urge upon them the necessity of losing no time 
in exterminating the whole of the mischievous race by every 
possible means. So implicitly were his instructions obeyed, 
that for many successive years scarcely a grain of corn was 
touched, and the villagers were lost in admiration at the success 
of the experiment Some time after his departure, on chancing 
to inquire how it happened that at Dale the potato crop was 
always a failure, although formerly the opposite was the case^ 
I was informed that of late years the Lord had sent a storie ” 
(worm) which destroyed the whole crop. Coupling this failure 
with the absence of Sparrows, I asked and even entreated the 
people to try the experiment of allowing the poor birds to 
remain unmolested ; but the proposal was merely received with 
the usual amount of head-shaking, and with the argument 
which I did not attempt to refute, that a Sparrow had never 
been seen to pick up a ''storie,” but that scores might be noticed 
