unless in warm weather; so cold, as well as want of corn, may have something to do with driving him home. In seasons when much rain spoils the corn on the stubbles early, and the weather keeps warm, some of the sparrows which have made the fields their home ever since they flew from the nest may perhaps stay in them longer after the grain is all spoilt, and eat more wild seeds than in drier and colder seasons. I heard from Mr. J. H. Gurney that he found much weed-seed in sparrows last autumn. There was rain enough in September, 1884, to sprout the grain on the stubbles, followed by very warm weather. Difference in the seasons may account for the difference between his experience and mine. Sparrows eat weed-seeds in the fields only when they can no longer get corn there, and, I believe, generally but for a short time.
Finches feed on them much longer, remaining in flocks on the stubbles long after all the corn and sparrows have disappeared thence. Linnets depend so much on wild seeds that they are numerous only on or near waste ground which will provide them with a constant supply of them. These birds are scarce here, but I have known a number of them to stay all the summer about a field foul with chickweed. The greenfinch feeds chiefly on wild seeds, and, I think, prefers them to corn; he does very little harm to the farmer, unless he grows seeds of the turnip and cabbage class (cruciferæ). I have found scarcely any seed of this class, cultivated or wild (including charlock) in house sparrows, while the crop of the tree sparrow (the indigenous sparrow of this part of the world) is commonly full of it. The few wild seeds I have found in sparrows have not mostly been those of weeds particularly troublesome to the farmer, and my observations have not led me to believe that these birds do any
