my estimate, not one-fiftieth as numerous as they have been within my memory. Every year the martins are finally banished by the sparrows from numbers of places where they have built, in ever decreasing numbers, for years. I could give any number of instances of this. Passing through villages where formerly there were hundreds of martins, one now sees none, or perhaps some three or four nests, all, or nearly so, occupied by sparrows. In districts where any martins are still left, they will keep on building a nest or two in favourite places every year, only to be turned out of them; and particularly within a radius of a few miles round my place, which supplies a large yearly surplus of them, they try to establish themselves on every new suitable building—but all in vain.[1] Of all the colonies of martins that I have been acquainted with anywhere, I do not know of one now remaining, and the only successful new one within my knowledge where the martins are not protected by killing the sparrows (an exception which goes to prove the rule), is at the ruins of Thorndon Hall near Brentwood, burnt out a few years since. This house is in the middle of a park; probably the sparrows do not care to live there because no corn is to be had near enough to please them.
- ↑ To give one instance, a few years ago, seeing sparrows about a few martins' nests on a new small house near my own, I asked the man who lived there whether he liked the sparrows. He said: 'I hate them, and am throwing stones at them all day, but cannot keep them from the martins' nests.' I lent him a gun; his son, a boy about twelve years old, took kindly to shooting the sparrows, killed I think nearly 200 in less than a month, and always kept the place free from them; in two years there were twenty-four martins' nests on the house. The man then died, and the next tenant, having no son to shoot the sparrows, did not trouble himself about the martins, and the sparrows cleared them all out in one season. The martins have often built a few nests, but I do not think that any young ones have flown there since.
