SEE BORN I A NA . 
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districts seems ascribable. If the house sparrow— our ugliest, least interesting, 
and most destructive of birds — is really spreading its dominion over our island, to 
the extermination of our other birds, we shall owe it a grudge which its un- 
deniable usefulness in towns will do little to clear it from. 
Isabel Fry. 
Another side of the Wild Garden. — Perhaps not many generations 
hence the old-fashioned spontaneous life of Nature in forest, marsh or mountain 
will be no more seen in England. The children of that coming age will indeed 
“ study ” beasts, birds and flowers in Museums, Zoological and Botanical Gardens, 
as useful illustrations to their Natural History primers — that and nothing more. 
So far as wild flowers are concerned, it is within the power of each one of us 
to defer this gloomy state of things simply by leaving wild flowers where they 
grow, enjoying them unselfishly, and not yielding to the plausible argument “ If I 
do not take them some one else will, who will not value them as I do.” Many 
plants, especially of our rarer kinds, will not flourish when transplanted to a 
garden — indeed their rarity may be due to the fact that the conditions they require 
of soil, moisture, &c., are met with in but few cases, so that there is a very poor 
chance that they will be obtained in a garden. Most of us are familiar with the 
appearance of a rare species in a “natural order ” bed ; the poor starveling is 
almost hidden by the label which bears its name and will, probably before long, 
mark its grave. 
But even if transplanted wild flowers invariably flourished, it would not affect 
the main arguments for leaving them unappropriated, that (1) the practice 
hastens the extinction of species, making the British flora so much the poorer, 
and also removing the landmarks of changes which took place in prehistoric times ; 
and further (2), wild flowers of special interest and beauty are lost to the nature- 
loving public, and become merely the monopoly of their owners. 
People dig up roots with an easy conscience, thinking that what they take can 
make no difference, for wild flowers seem so abundant and so ready of growth; 
but this belief is not borne out by facts. The primrose is receding fast to secluded 
country, unable to stand the annual raids made upon it. Ferns and orchids 
seem especially easy to exterminate. That the mountain flora cannot hold its 
ground may be seen by anyone who climbs Helvellyn by the safe and frequented 
path, and contrasts its state as regards flowers with the dangerous and almost 
untrodden path ; along the first there is hardly anything but grass, the other 
presents a rich alpine flora. The acquisitive tourist must be responsible for the 
difference, for both paths are on the same mountain slope. 
Moss campion has been taken, to the last root, from Grisedale ; it still keeps 
a precarious foothold in the Lake District, but its loss from that special spot is a 
grievous one, for there the sight of it checked Wordsworth’s mourning for his 
brother. It grew, as he tells us,* on the spot where they had parted for the last 
time. What can make up for such losses as this ? Certainly not an introduced 
flora, however showy; most emphatically not a Botanic Garden, divided into 
plots for the respective Orders. 
C. Garlick. 
Martins and Sparrows. — A few years ago a pair of house martins, which 
had built just over my bedroom window, were attacked by a number of house 
sparrows, who evidently wished to turn out the martins and take possession 
themselves. After skirmishing for some time the martins appeared to have 
beaten and the sparrows flew off. But after some time, as the owners of the nest 
were foraging over the adjacent meadows, the sparrows appeared again. One 
went to the nest, and entering, was seen to come out again with an egg in his 
beak. Then he flew over a gravel path and there dropped the egg, smashing it 
to pieces. I cannot say whether this was repeated with the other eggs, but can 
vouch for the above. 
II. R. V. 
“ Elegiac verses in Memory of my Brother.” — Wm. Wordsworth, 1S05. 
