USE OF SMALL BIRDS. 
25 
end to it. The cage had been again set on the out- 
side of the window, and was unfortunately left 
exposed to a sudden and heavy fall of rain: the con- 
sequence was that the whole of the young were 
drowned in the nest. The poor parents, who had 
so boldly and indefatigably performed their duty, 
continued hovering round the house, and looking 
wistfully in at the window, for several days, and 
then disappeared *. 
Before we take leave of this tribe of small birds, 
we would say a word or two respecting the benefit 
or injuries imputed to them. That they are occa- 
sionally mischievous cannot be denied, though it is 
but fair to add, that they also, like the Rooks before 
mentioned, repay us by a considerable balance of 
good. That the Bullfinch feeds on the buds and 
seeds of trees, there can be no doubt, and that the 
Chaffinch, though by many considered as a pure 
feeder on insects, does the same, particularly in early 
Spring, when he inflicts ruinous injury on the 
sprouting crops of several plants, is equally true. 
Sparrows, too, burrow in our stacks, and consume a 
certain quantity of corn; not, indeed, in the same 
serious quantities that another bird does, called the 
Snow-Bunting : these birds, in hard Winters, come 
from the north in prodigious flocks, and, where 
they take up their quarters, become quite a nuisance ; 
not so much by what they consume, as by what 
they destroy ; which they do thus. In search of 
grain they frequent the stack, and then seizing 
the end of a straw, deliberately draw it out. 
To such a degree has this been done by them, 
* Edin. Phil . Jour, 
