4
a country-place where this has not gone on at some time or other, although it has never happened to Mr. Morris (cf. 'Sparrow-Shooter,' p. 7). Some have argued that this does not matter, because the Sparrows do not kill them, but only evict them ; but wherever they go it is all the same, they are so much bullied that very few of them succeed in rearing young[1].
It may be that in some exceptional seasons (when a great plague of insect-life shall again occur), as in 1574, when it is said cockchaffers gathered in such numbers on the banks of the Severn as to prevent the working of the water-mills, and in 1868 when they formed a black cloud in Galway, which darkened the sky for a league, destroying vegetation so completely as to change summer into winter ('Wild Birds' Protection Report,' p. 170), Sparrows will do good. Bearing this in mind no one should advocate their extirpation; but Mr. Morris and his friends claim much more than this for them. They claim that in an ordinary year, when insects are not more than usually numerous, Sparrows do more good than harm: it is exceedingly difficult to prove a negative; but I do not believe that any one who has not made a series of dissections realizes how much corn they eat.
Mr. Wesley's book gives a table prepared by many hands with much care (p. 12), a study of which will show that corn forms their customary food for every month of the year. In January it is corn from stacks and from poultry-yards, mingled with refuse-corn from
- ↑ Nor is it confined to the Martins: every bird is, more or less, driven from the vicinity of houses by the obnoxious Sparrow. For my part I would sooner see two or three Chaffinches and Nuthatches eat the crumbs which are put out of the window, than any number of Sparrows, which, by their presence, only usurp the place of better birds than themselves.
