village of Writtle, near Chelmsford, told me that the sparrows devoured the whole crop, not leaving a grain.
Without going further into the detail of sparrows' food, the question whether they are or not, on the whole, useful to the farmer by destroying insects can, I think, easily be decided. They seldom go far from houses and roads into the fields except when they can get corn there, and then for the sole purpose of eating it, as the contents of their crops prove. Going through the fields in May and June, when most insects are given to their young, I seldom see a sparrow much more than a hundred yards from a house or road. Speaking broadly, it may be said that, unless very near houses and roads, sparrows take no insects in the fields. If they did any good to the farmer in this way, the land near their haunts would be worth more per acre to cultivate than the enormously greater extent of ground where sparrows never take an insect. But this is not the case. The greater ravages they commit on the corn are the only noticeable effects produced by sparrows on land near places always frequented by them.
With regard to wild seeds eaten by sparrows, I do not think that the land close to their usual haunts is perceptibly more free from weeds than elsewhere. I have not found weed-seeds in sparrows shot on the corn crops and stubbles till late in autumn; and a few days after half-rotten corn and wild seeds were found in their crops they all left the fields. I do not, however, remember working this out thoroughly to the last in more than one season. The sparrow seems to be 'a parasite on civilization' which has followed the cultivation of wheat from warmer countries (his rising later and roosting earlier than other birds, in the warmest places he can find, point to this), and living and sleeping in the fields does not suit him
