JANUARY. 
11 
Nelis, Iris Gregoire,‘Avocat Nelis, Bezi d’Esperen, Thompson’s, Aglae Gregoire, 
Louise Bonne of Jersey, Prince Albert. Such are my stock. Such were my 
kind friend, Mr. Rivers’s gift. These little trees are the delight of all who 
come here. I have two other gifts of his which I can most highly recommend, 
the Transparent Gage and the Royal Victoria Nectarine. The last is late, very 
large, handsome, very excellent, and the tree is very healthy. It is by far the 
best Nectarine that I ever saw. It is round, a little flattened "at the apex. 
These Pears were sent to me to taste by my friend, Charles Ingram, Esq., 
of Blandford (not grown on the quince stock), and they are very good—Van 
Mons Leon le Clerc (extra good), Dunmore, and Napoleon. 
If your readers buy some of the above Pears, I think they must be pleased. 
Except the first two, I have not put them in the order of merit. With the 
exception of 28, they may all be called “ delicious.” Doyenne d’Alengon is very 
superior, but tender in its blossoms. In fine, I may observe, that is impossible 
to define the seasons of ripening. I never knew Pears and Apples rot so fast. 
Tarrant Rushton. W. F. Radclyeee. 
ON SPARROWS EATING GOOSEBERRY BUDS. 
I obseryed with some interest Mr. Tillery’s account in Vol. IV., page 122, 
respecting rooks eating Crocus bulbs, and also his remarks on sparrows ; but I 
differ from him as to sparrows eating Gooseberry buds. During a long ex¬ 
perience I have never detected them doing so, although I have watched them 
closely amongst damaged bushes. * I may have mentioned this before in these 
pages, and also that bullfinches did the damage, and that sparrows were wrong¬ 
fully blamed. I likewise differ from Mr. Tillery’s statement, where he says 
“ Who ever saw a sparrow eat a grub or caterpillar if it could get anything 
else in the shape of grain, seeds, bread, or potatoes ?” I have encouraged a 
small colony of sparrows for several years, and it is surprising to see the quan¬ 
tity of both grubs and caterpillars which they carry to feed their young. Other 
writers mention the same thing. In the “ Naturalist’s Magazine ” one person 
speaks of a sparrow dropping grubs from its bill into a cage to feed a canary, 
which a lady at Chelsea had put outside her window; and Bishop Stanley states, 
on the authority of another writer, that a pair of sparrows during the breeding 
season may destroy 3400 caterpillars in one week. I may have said enough to 
show that my own statement stands not alone, to which I may add, that there 
are many different kinds of birds that feed their tender young with food of 
very different quality from that of the old ones. In fact, this is considered to 
be one, if not the chief, cause which gives impulse to the migration of birds. 
I fully concur in the account of sparrows eating off the tops of early Peas. 
Perhaps the best preservative is to cover them with nets or branches, or to draw 
a little soil over the tender crop until the attention of the sparrow's is drawn 
off' to something else. They seldom attack the pods of early Peas, though 
sometimes they injure late ones. They are often blamed for greater damage 
done by tomtits or “ oxees ” of the Scotch. There are four different kinds of 
the Parus or tomtit that frequent gardens, all of which destroy insects, but at 
times some of them are very mischievous. P. major, or saw-sharper, called so 
in Norfolk from his shrill notes, like the sharpening of a saw, is the one which 
in winter taps on bee-hives and snaps up the bees, and it is remarkable that 
Forster in his “North America,” Vol. I., speaks of its having been met with 
in “latitude 40° north, and longitude 48° west, about 920 miles from land.” 
I leave this curious fact to notice that it is the P. coeruleus, the blue-cap, 
which does most damage to late Peas, and also picks holes in the stalk ends of 
Pears. Mr. Knight, who raised some of the best kinds of new Peas, had much 
