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creepers. The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is noted as especially frequenting 
the apple ; the Gold-crested Regulus frequents the Scotch pine, spruce, and 
other Coniferce; the Bearded Tit, Yellow Wagtail, Titlark, Wren, Cuckoo, 
and Water Rail are mentioned as serviceable in osier-beds and reeds, and m 
marsh-hay. Amongst gooseberry, currant, and raspberry bushes the Titmice 
and Warblers, the Wren and the Cuckoo, are noticed as of especial use. 
Amongst cabbage and turnip crops, the Partridge, Spotted Flycatcher, 
Swifts, Swallows, and Martins are of use; and on grass (besides the 
Warblers, Swallows, Swifts, Martins, and Partridge before mentioned), the 
Wagtails, Pipits, and Starlings are all serviceable. The Cuckoo is. ol 
especial service as eating hairy larvae, and the Flycatcher as destroying 
white butterflies. 
During the twenty years in which I have received notes from agriculturists 
on measures of prevention of insect attacks, many other kinds of birds have 
been mentioned as serviceable, and especially the Rook (when not in such 
overwhelming numbers as to do as much harm to the crop as the insects in 
their work of extirpation); and in connection with the great attack of Antler 
Moth in the south of Scotland in 1894, I had observations from one district 
of the stomachs of the Snow Buntings being full of the caterpillars in 
the winter. 
In the case of the disastrous infestation of Diamond-back Moth in 1891, 
in reply to my official request for information as to what birds were observed 
as helpful in clearing the caterpillars from the infested turnip and cabbage 
leafage, I received notes of presence of the following kinds:—Rooks, Crows, 
Seagulls, Peewits, Grey Plovers, Green or Golden Plovers, Starlings, Linnets, 
Green Linnets or Greenfinches, Chaffinches, and Yellowhammers; but 
amongst all the returns sent me, which ranged along a wide band of coiintry 
from Dover to Aberdeen, I only find three replies favourable to Sparrow help, 
and one of these couched in doubtful language. On the other side, it was 
mentioned that the Sparrows were occupied with early oats, and had no 
time to spare for caterpillars ; also the Sparrows and smaller birds preferred 
the barley ; and that the Sparrows were too numerous, and were against the 
Swallows.*—E. A. 0. 
The above notes are only brought forward to show that, independently of 
the Sparrow (which is often brought forward as if our safety from insect 
ravage lay in the keeping of this one species), we are excellently supplied 
with a watchful and efficient bird-police, able and willing to take the insect 
robbers of our fields and gardens in charge, and helpful, without raising 
undue levies for the supply of overwhelmingly increasing progeny, and 
without dispossessing far better tenants from their houses. 
The rapid rate of increase of the Sparrow is one of the reasons why pro¬ 
tection places us in such a difficult position in saving our crops from its 
ravage. One pair of these birds frequently produces more than twenty 
young ones in the season, three or four broods of six or seven each being 
stated to be not unusual; and a very little calculation will show that in six 
years, where no disaster betides them, the progeny of one single pair will 
amount to millions, as evidenced by the rapidity with which the small 
number imported have spread over the United States, Australia, and New 
Zealand. 
We have evidence of the broad-scale losses caused by introduction of the 
Sparrow, in the devastations brought about by its introduction into the 
United States, Canada, and Australia; and we have evidence in our own 
country of the saving of crops and restoration of helpful birds by systematic 
destruction of this one kind ; but we have no reliable records of injurious 
effects being caused by enforced banishment or destruction of the Sparrow. 
* Injury by Sparrow devastation is a constantly recurring matter brought 
before me, and by way of one special observation, I had a record in 1884 from 
Mr. Gaskell, then Secretary of the Wirrall Farmers’ Club, Birkenhead, that “ The 
judges of our farm crops estimated the damage done by Sparrows to be one-third in 
some districts they judged crops in.” 
