THE SPARROW: AN INDICTMENT. 
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both from the river side near Kew ; Tansy ( Tanacetum vulgar e) 
and Autumnal Squill ( Scilla autumnalis) from the river side near 
Petersham meadows ; Meadowsweet ( Spiraa Ulmaria), Great 
Celandine ( Chelidonium majus), etc., etc. 
C. Rosa Little. 
THE SPARROW: AN INDICTMENT. 
WOULD bring to the notice of all true Selbornians 
the duty and necessity of destroying the sparrow. 
I have just been reading that excellent little book, 
The House Sparrow, by Messrs. H. Gurney, J. Elliott 
Coues, and C. Russell, and am very sure that it is not a bit too 
hard on the bird. 
I wish to bear independent witness against the wretch, and 
therefore send you the following remarks, which were written 
before I had seen the book just mentioned. There is, however, 
one point in the sparrow’s favour which I had overlooked, and 
that is the fact that he eats the seeds of noxious weeds some- 
times. This service does not amount to much here, where the 
sparrow can get grain all the year round. I hope he has the 
Board of Agriculture as well as Miss Ormerod against him ; 
but at present he is, sad to say, strong enough to defy the 
Government. 
I wish to be just to the sparrow, for he has his good points, 
though they are few. The thing that will tell most in his favour 
is that while they are still in the nest he feeds his young ones to 
a large extent upon caterpillars. The old birds do not swallow 
these, but carry them in their beaks as tomtits do. I have 
found the young sparrows in the nest full to the beak with 
caterpillars, and I have many a time seen the old ones carefully 
searching the bushes and cabbages. But when the young ones 
leave the nest they are fed like pigeons, and the peas in the 
gardens suffer. Point No. 2 is that the sparrow kills and eats 
cock-chafers, even catching them in the air. But this is a very 
small point in his favour, because he kills very few, as they 
seldom move by day, and because they are so good to eat and 
so many things like them. Fowls go wild over them, and one 
of our setter dogs ate a hundred and twenty-eight at a sitting, 
and did not take two minutes over it either. These were cooked 
by having boiling water poured into the bottle in which they 
were collected (the quickest way of killing them), but he was 
just as eager for them alive — they are such beautiful, fat, tasty 
beetles. The third point in favour of the sparrow — but perhaps 
he would not urge it — is that he is very good to eat. 
And now for his sins. Except when the young ones are in 
the nest, and that is not long, the sparrows live entirely at the 
expense of man. They take the tender shoots of the peas as 
soon as they appear above ground, and the first lesson which 
