the character of the insect-food in young sparrows at my place and elsewhere. On the whole, the deduction from the food test during fifteen years seems to be that the sparrows are useless, and that the insects which would be given to their young by them if they were allowed to live in numbers about my premises would be so much food taken, when they most want it, from better birds which live entirely, or nearly so, on insects, and thus keep them, especially caterpillars, down so effectively in the absence of sparrows that, when a chance pair of these come and build, there are few of their favourite sorts for them.
After the almost total absence of sparrows for many years from my garden, everything seems to do as well as elsewhere, many things much better. Young peas need no protection from birds, young lettuces are not eaten off, green peas are not picked out of the pods (except one year in the fifteen, when the ox-eye and blue tits devoured all the late peas), and the gooseberry buds are not picked out; the crops of this fruit have therefore been very heavy year after year. Before the sparrows were banished, at some time in winter, the gooseberry buds were often nearly all picked out (the bushes are sometimes killed in this way). This mischief would be done in a few days, when nobody happened to be about the garden; it was impossible to know when it would be done so as to catch the birds at it. One thing seemed to show that titmice, commonly accused, were not the culprits; a few buds were always left untouched at the end of every shoot otherwise stripped of them. This looked like the work of sparrows or finches; they could not get at these because the end of the twig would not carry them; but a titmouse, with his strong clutch, could easily get at the buds there, hanging, as he often does, back downwards. It has often
