Can any one else, who wishes to speak on behalf of the Sparrows, produce any evidence of their feeding—not occasionally, but habitually—in any locality in the United Kingdom, on the Wireworm, or on the larvæ of the Gamma Moth or Crane-fly? They eat the Rose Aphis, but no one has detected them eating the Wheat Aphis (A. granaria), which is much more to the point, though at least one competent observer has made special search for it.
But whatever be the kinds of larvæ which they eat, and whatever the quantity, if Sparrows did not eat them, would not our Greenfinches and Chaffinches do so? This seems the true way of putting it.
No one has ever answered the late Colonel Russell's query:—"Why is it that in fields far away from farm-premises, where there are no Sparrows, insects do not increase and multiply?" And why have not insects multiplied at Colonel Russell's place in Essex, where, for many years, Sparrows were rigorously kept down, in fact almost exterminated? The reason must be that the caterpillars are eaten by other small birds, such as Chaffinches, Greenfinches, and Yellow-Hammers, and by a host of Warblers and other birds which visit this country for the summer, when insect-life in all its stages is rampant.
It is all very well to suppose that by eating fourteen flies a Sparrow disposes of their subsequent progeny to the tune of 280,000,000; but we know what these calculations, which look so prodigious on paper, are worth. Under ordinary conditions, how many of the two hundred million flies would reach maturity? perhaps very few, or none at all.
It is a shame to see how the pretty House-Martins are decreasing in this country at the hands of the Sparrows, which dispossess them of their nests. There is hardly
