THE HOUSE SPARROW,
By an Ornithologist,
J. H. GURNEY, Junr.
THE common house sparrow (Passer domesticus; fringillidæ, the finch tribe) has some enthusiastic patrons in this country among the friends of dumb animals, and it has many deadly enemies among farmers and gardeners. I do not propose to enter into the charges brought against it by gardeners,[1] so much as to treat the question from a farmer's point of view.
No one can for a moment doubt that the sparrow question is now a very important one, and that it is becoming, year by year, more so; that is, if only a tithe of what has been said and written about it at farmers' clubs and in agricultural newspapers be true. A large farmer in Cheshire told his audience at a meeting last year that in his opinion sparrows, assisted by other small birds, had done the country £770,094 worth of damage in a year, reckoning a bushel per acre all over the kingdom (vide The Times, Sept. 13th, 1884, Chester Courant, Aug. 27th). If this tremendous estimate be anywhere near the mark
- ↑ Besides eating peas frequently and gooseberries occasionally, sparrows have an evil propensity for picking flowers to pieces, including the crocus, dahlia, polyanthus, hepatica, heartsease, and wistaria.
