XXII 
Journal of Proceedings. 
only noticeable effects produced by sparrows near villages, houses, and 
roads. Sparrows also do much mischief in gardens—by feeding off young 
peas, lettuces, Ac., eating green peas from the pods, stripping gooseberry 
bushes of their fruit buds, and destroying crocus flowers. The question 
remains whether they do good enough in gardens to make up for such 
misdeeds there. For some years I carefully investigated the question of 
sparrows’ food, examining that taken out of thousands, old and young, 
killed at all sorts of times and places. The general result was that the 
old ones contained little else but corn, rarely an insect. The young are 
fed with a great variety of food—corn, green and ripe, green peas, insects, 
&c. At least 95 per cent, of a sparrow’s food during its whole life seems 
to be corn. 
“ To prove that sparrows are really useful, it is not enough to show that 
they destroy some insects ; it must also be shown that in their absence 
other birds would not destroy them as effectively. My object in letting no 
sparrows live anywhere near my house has been partly to get a better 
practical test of their utility than any amount of examination of the food 
in their crops. Sparrows having been almost entirely absent from my 
place for years, if they took insects which other birds will not, such 
insects would increase, and the sparrows killed there would show this. 
Now it has been quite as unusual to find an insect in an old sparrow there 
as elsewhere. In fifty of all ages, from the time they first feed them¬ 
selves, killed there one summer with food in their crops, this consisted of 
corn, milky, green, and ripe, and sometimes green peas; only two small 
insects were found in the whole number. The old ones, however, eating 
few insects anywhere, this was not test enough, but if any insects were 
the peculiar prey of sparrows, and had increased, any nestlings there 
should be full of them. A pair or two of sparrows have therefore gene¬ 
rally been allowed to have a nest in or near my garden, and nearly every 
year young ones have been taken there and the food in them carefully 
examined with a lens. It varied greatly, but certainly there were not 
more insects, if as many, as where sparrows abound. Of caterpillars, 
supposed to be kept down by sparrows, only two small ones, and those in 
callow birds, have been found during the twelve years. On the whole, the 
deduction from these tests, so far as they go, seems to be be that the 
insects given to their young by the sparrows, were they allowed to live in 
numbers about my premises, would be so much food taken when they 
most want it from better birds which live entirely, or nearly so, on insects, 
and thus, where not displaced by those ‘ parasites on civilisation,’ the 
sparrows, keep down the insects much more effectively than the latter. 
After the absence of sparrows for twelve years, everything in my garden 
seems to do as well as elsewhere ; and many things better. For instance, 
the young peas want no protection beyond trapping the mice ; except one 
year, when the titmice took it into their heads to eat them; the green 
peas are not taken from the pods, and, unless bullfinches come and live in 
the garden in winter, the gooseberry buds are not picked out, consequently 
we have had extraordinary crops of that fruit for some years past. 
“ The general results of my tests seem to prove at least that no one need 
fear that he does any harm if he shoots every sparrow which goes near a 
martin’s nest. Whether it would be easier to protect the martins by 
killing such sparrows only, or all those about the premises, I cannot say ; 
but the former plan can easily be tried by those who, for any reason, do 
not wish to kill more sparrows than is necessary. 
11 About my house are plenty of swallows ; that they are not displaced by 
the great numbers of martins shows that the two birds live on different 
food, and that we want both to keep down different insects. As martins, 
in all places where they can keep their nests, are at least twice as 
