THE SPARROW. 
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to the situation it chooses, hay and straw being little used, for instance, under 
eaves, but feathers seeming indispensable in every case. The bird is very fond of 
warmth, and Professor Newton states that it has been seen collecting feathers in 
winter and carrying them to the hole in which it was in the habit of roosting 
with its fellows. The eggs are usually five or six in number, and the bird has 
two or three sets in a season. They are whitish, coloured with more or less dark 
spots, streaks, and blotches. When immunity from persecution is granted them, 
Sparrows speedily become a plague, and we have at times, when persecuted beyond 
endurance, taken nearly a hundred eggs and young ones from the ivy-covered walls 
of the house, together with two wheelbarrow-loads of straw and feathers. In a 
week or two. however, there were apparently as many nests as ever. Such a colony 
is very capricious. Some years its numbers are very full, at others hardly any will 
frequent their old haunts. Of late years, owing, we believe, to the hard winters, 
there have been very few Sparrows in North Lincolnshire, and in the summer of 
1878 one miserable old cock bird formed the sole representative for some weeks of 
the community which with us was wont to be so populous and noisy. 
Jesse gives a good character to the Sparrow. In order to be fair we quote his 
words : “ Many observant persons are now aware, that in places where Sparrows 
have been destroyed, some sorts of fruit-trees have been stripped of their leaves by 
caterpillars. I am the more anxious to prove the utility of Sparrows, because they 
are birds possessed of a very kindly nature, living in great habits of sociability 
with each other. Several instances have been related to me of their having been 
observed feeding the young of other birds which have been in a state of captivity; 
and there is one well-attested anecdote of a Sparrow, which, having been caught by 
the leg by a piece of worsted, from which it could not extricate itself, was tended 
and fed by its congeners through a whole winter. This kindliness of disposition 
does not appear to have escaped the notice of farming-men, who nevertheless, as I 
observed before, are great enemies to the whole race. I heard one particular 
instance of a farmer’s servant having placed a nest of young Sparrows in a trap- 
cage, and having caught forty old birds, all coming with food in their mouths to 
feed the helpless young.” # He states, too, that it has been calculated that a pair 
of Sparrows, while feeding their young, destroy above 3,300 caterpillars a week, 
besides other insects. 
Though seldom seen far from man’s abode, the Sparrows in autumn collect 
into flocks—especially, it is said, the London Sparrows—and resort to the cornfields 
* “Gleanings in Natural History,” p. 291. 
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