In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

Chapter Ten.

Spare the Sparrow.

“Ye slay them! and wherefore? For the gain
Of a scant handful, more or less, of wheat.
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain.”

On this grand gipsy-tour of ours we had reason to be thankful every day for a good many things. First and foremost, that our horses were so sturdy, strong, and willing; that the great caravan itself was so comfortable, and the smaller one so snug, and both so delightfully and artistically fitted up, that they looked more like the saloon and cabin of some beautiful yacht than the homes of amateur gipsies.

It took us a whole month to get across the borders and well into bonnie Scotland. But a more pleasant month I for one never spent before nor since. We took it easy. We were determined to study the otium cum dignitate and dolce far niente, and at the end of this month it would have been difficult to say which of us was the hardier or jollier. The horses were sleek and fat, Hurricane Bob spent most of his time either lying among rugs on the coupé with the children, or tumbling on the daisied sward, while the cat did nothing but sing and look complacent. We human beings were so happy, we could even afford to laugh and be gay when thunders rolled, when gales of wind blew and rocked the caravan as if she had been a ship at sea, or when the rain came down in torrents.

Maggie May had already ceased to be an invalid, and Ida had got as brown as if she really were a true-born Romany-Rye.

No, we never hurried the horses. For there was so much to be seen, fresh scenery at every turn of the road, beautiful wild flowers to be gathered to fill the vases. The children at lunch-time even made great garlands of them, and hung them round the horses’ necks.

Of course the village children always took us for a show, and ran out to meet and cheer us, but most grown-up folks took us simply for what we were—a party on a pleasant summer tour.

Mysie, strange to say, although she often stopped out of doors all night, was always back in good time for the start in the morning.

I fear she proved a great enemy to the birds.

One evening she brought into the tent a beautifully plumaged cock-sparrow.

Now I am very fond of sparrows. They are historical birds, and birds of Bible times, so I relieved Mysie of her poor prisoner, and let it flutter away.

We then had some talk about sparrows, and I embody my ideas of them in the following sketch.

The British Sparrow: a study in ornithology.

The sparrow, although it undoubtedly belongs to the great natural family Fringillidae, which includes among its members the weavers and whydah birds, the linnet, the goldfinch, and bullfinch, to say nothing of the canary itself, can hardly be said to rank with the aristocracy of the bird world. Quite the reverse; in fact, the Passer domesticus is a bird of low life. He is by no means a humble bird, however. There is nothing at all of the Uriah Heep about my little friend; he has quite as good an opinion of himself as any feathered biped need to have. Yet if it be possible for some classes of birds to look with disdain on the behaviour and doings of others, sparrows are surely so treated by their betters. And no wonder, for they are neither elegant in shape nor appearance; they do not dress well either in winter or in summer; it is not their lot to be arrayed in scarlet or in gold, but in humble brown and russet grey. So much for the appearance of the bird.

In manners and in deportment sparrows are far beneath bon ton; their knowledge of music is exceedingly limited, their appreciation of sweet sounds conspicuous only by its absence—why, they think nothing of interrupting even the nightingale in his song—and if any bird can be said to talk Billingsgate, those birds are sparrows. Should any one doubt the truth of my last statement, let him go and listen for one minute to the wrangling linguamachy that goes on of an evening after sunset, as they are retiring to roost in a tree.

Yet, for all this, many of the tricks and manners of these plebeian birds are well worth watching, and often highly amusing.

It is not, however, merely to amuse the reader that I now write, but quite as much in behalf of the bird itself. For of late years the character of the British sparrow has been aspersed in this country, but more particularly abroad; and I think he ought to have a fair and impartial trial. I therefore stand forward, not, mind you, as the champion, but the counsel both for and against the prisoner at the bar—the said Passer domesticus, who, on this occasion, is not arraigned for the murder of cock-robin, but for a far more heinous offence, namely, that of constituting himself a common nuisance, and doing more harm than good in the world.

For some years back I have had many—nay, but constant—opportunities for studying the habits of sparrows and many other kinds of birds, and I am not unobservant. I live in one of the prettiest and leafiest nooks of tree-clad Berkshire. The village that adjoins me nestles among trees; the gardens all about the houses are masses of shrubbery and flowers; stone fences are utterly unknown; there are hedges everywhere. Our trees are wide-spreading oaks and planes, drooping acacias, leafy lindens, elm, ash, willow, poplar, and what not.

Up the lordly line of splendid poplar-trees that bound my cosy little paddock the green ivy grows, and here sparrows dwell in hundreds. I do not shoot my wild birds, nor do my children chase and frighten them. Linnets build every year in the laurels close by the dog-kennel: robins feed with the dogs, and some older sparrows know names that we have given them, and come to be fed. No need to hang up boxes for them to build in—we live in the bush; but in summer-time they have a bath on the back lawn, and it is a sight to see them in the early morning. Thrushes, blackbirds, finches, sparrows, starlings—they all agree as well as if they had learned Watts’ hymns, and laid them all to heart. More about my birds another day—perhaps. One starling, however, I must mention here; he comes down every sunny morning, with his wife; he sends her in to bathe and splash; he sits on the edge of the bath and receives the drops—that is all the bath he takes. She is a dutiful wife.

The plumage of the domestic sparrow is almost too well known to need description. In one of the very excellent publications of Messrs Cassell and Co.—viz, “Familiar Wild Birds”—the following remarks occur:—

“The difference in the appearance of the plumage of a country sparrow, as compared with his town-bred cousin, would be hardly imagined, the fresh bright plumage of the one displaying the prettily marked black, white, and brown, whilst smoke and dirt hide the beauty of the town sparrow, so that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the sex at a glance. The male, however, has a brilliant black throat, and is otherwise more determined in colour, the hen being especially deficient in the bright brown of the wings and the chocolate mark over the eyes.”

This is quite true. The author might have added, however, that the black bib which the male sparrow wears is seldom perfect until June, and the birds pair and build long before they have acquired their summer dresses. They are in such a hurry that they do not wait for their wedding-garments.

Now, this is just the place to mention a fact that I have proved again and again, to my own satisfaction at all events. It is this: sparrows are polygamous; house-sparrows are undoubtedly so, and I believe also so are their first cousins, who build in trees. I myself was reared in the woods and wilds of Scotland, and, like most boys, was fond of bird-nesting. It often used to strike us lads as strange that differently marked eggs were found in the same sparrow’s nest. We did not suspect then that these were laid by different birds. Last week a family quarrel arose among some sparrows in the large wistaria that covers the front of my cottage, and during the row an immense hammock of a double nest was knocked down. When I say a double nest I mean two nests joined in one—a kind of a “butt and a ben,” only with separate doors. One nest was empty—only clean, well-lined, and ready for use. The other contained four eggs—two pairs. They have the distinctive colouring and markings of ordinary sparrow’s eggs, but each pair is different, and the gentleman sparrow who owned that semi-detached cottage has two wives; they have built another and private residence some yards from the old site, and it is to be hoped will live happy ever afterwards.

I have a sparrow who answers to the name of “Weekie,” and who comes to call. This sparrow has three wives.

In many ways he is a remarkable bird. For several winters he has slept on the same rose-twig close under the verandah, with his wives—at first he had but two—not far from him. I used to watch Weekie from a top window sending his wives to roost just at sunset and before he retired himself. He would perch himself on the top of a tall cypress-tree and call them, turning his head this way and that as he hailed them, evidently not knowing from what direction they would come. But they always did come, and after some friendly remonstrance went to roost. About ten minutes after Weekie would give himself a little grateful shake, and hop in under the verandah to his favourite twig.

It was Weekie who first taught me that sparrows build for themselves little shelter-nests—any person in the country who takes the trouble to study these birds can prove to his own satisfaction that such is the case. It is only, however, in frosty weather that the sparrows take the trouble to erect these nests of convenience.

Some two or three years ago we had a very severe frost. During the first day or two I observed straws lying about the verandah; then I noticed that Weekie brought a straw with him at night, and on taking the lamp out to look at him—Weekie meanwhile looking down with one wondering bead of an eye—I noticed that he had his straw over his shoulder. Well, there couldn’t have been much comfort in this, but it was a hint to his two wives, and sure enough they took it, and I saw them building a nest of moss and straw, not larger than half a goose’s egg, around and under Weekie’s twig—not above, because there the verandah sheltered him. Weekie was happy now, I suppose, and warm as to his toes. Weekie’s wives are dutiful wives, but mark this: they themselves had no shelter-nests, and all through the terrible frost-spell they cowered by night within a foot or two of their lord and master—but on bare twigs.

I notice now that these shelter-nests are quite common. A cock-sparrow slept in one last winter in the great Gloire de Dijon rose-tree that covers the northern wall of my stable; but this was built above the perching-twig—it was, in fact, a little arbour.

When they don’t build shelter-nests, sparrows crouch at night under eaves, in ivy thickets, in old nests, and in the holes of trees, which they sometimes line.

The great work of the year—building and bringing forth their young—among sparrows commences early in March, or much sooner, if the weather be fine. But long before this married sparrows who have determined upon a change of residence, and bachelor sparrows who intend to set up for themselves when summer comes, go prospecting around, popping into holes, examining eaves, and chimneys, and ivied trees.

The former take their wives with them, whom they seem to consult and try their best to please, often in vain, for the female sparrow appears to derive a genuine pleasure from house-hunting, and keeps it up as long as possible—till probably the warm weather comes upon them all at once, and they are fain to settle down anywhere.

In the early part of the season the nests are not built very rapidly: about June or July they are often run up in three or even in two days.

The birds seem to have a dreamy kind of happiness in building the first nest, and want their sweetness long drawn out. In fact, it is the honeymoon.

Example: A half-built nest in the wistaria-tree just under a huge cluster of sweet-scented blossom. It is noon, a bright March sun is shining, and up in the tree it is almost as warm as summer. The particular sparrow who owns that half-built nest has only one wife; it is his first season, and hers. They are both young and innocent, not to say ignorant. The foundation of the nest is terribly untidy, exceptionally so. The hen sits about a yard from the nest, with her consequential morsel of a bill in the air, giving her body a little jerk every now and then as if she had the hiccup, and saying “po-eete.” The cock is closer to the nest, busy preening his feathers in the sunshine. Presently he hops into the nest, and has a turn or two round by way of seeing how things are going on. This is a hint to the hen, and excites her to a little more activity, and away she goes to look for a mouthful of building material. She stops on the garden-path to pick up a tiny beetle or two, then hops on to the vegetable beds, shakes up a few bunches of dry couch-grass roots, but finally abandons them for a terribly long and terribly strong wheaten straw. Back to the wistaria-tree she flies with this, half frightened at her own temerity in carrying anything so large. She sticks it up at the side of the nest—it hangs a long way down the tree—and retires to look at it. The cock looks at it too. They both study it.

“It is very hard, isn’t it, my dear?” says the cock at last.

“It is a very fine piece of straw though,” replies the hen, slightly piqued.

“Yes,” says the cock, “as a straw it is certainly a very grand specimen. I admit that. The puzzle is how to work it in.”

So they both sit down with their wise wee heads together, and look at that strong straw, and think and wonder in what possible way or shape it can be made use of. They sit there for quite two hours giving vent only to an occasional suggestive “cheep,” and a jerk of their little bodies as if they both had the hiccup. But at last they suddenly awaken to a sense of their folly. Two whole hours of sunshine lost, and all for a straw! That straw is at once cast loose, and both fly off and soon return with something far more useful, if less ornamental. And so the work goes on.

My sparrows build the main portion of their nests principally with hay, straw, and withered weed roots, but this is mixed and mingled with a variety of other material, rags, pieces of old rope or twine; but paper above all things, especially, it appears to me, tracts and bills relating to cheap sales, because the paper on which these are printed is soft. A long string of white or coloured cloth may often be seen fluttering pennant-fashion from a sparrow’s nest. Some believe this is so placed in order to frighten cats and hawks. More likely it is mere slovenliness. Well, a sparrow’s nest outside does look a most untidy wisp. But there is an art in its very untidiness, and the thickness of the nest renders it cool in summer and warm for a shelter-nest during winter. The amount of feathers crammed into a single nest, particularly that of a tree-sparrow, is often quite astounding.

An old nest is sometimes made to do duty over and over again during the season, but it is always overhauled and re-lined.

Sparrows are not invariably wise in the selection of their building sites. Instance: Two sparrows built this summer in the rose-covered spout of my verandah. A terrible storm of rain came, and the young were drowned in the torrent of water that came from the roof. But I daresay these silly birds think such a thing will not occur again—in their time. At all events, they have thrown the dead birds out to the cat, renovated and re-lined the nest, and there are eggs in it now. I was staying last summer for a week or two with a friend not far from here. There were plenty of martens about, and three nests under the eaves right over my bedroom window. For several mornings I had noticed grains of wheat on my window-ledge, and on looking up towards the nest I noticed feathers protruding. Now, had I been Samuel Pickwick, I should have at once taken out my note-book and made the following entry:—“N.B. The house-martens in Hampshire line their nests with feathers and feed their young on wheat and barley.”

I laughingly told honest Joseph G—, my friend’s gardener, of my discovery in natural history. He was too old a sparrow to be caught with chaff, however.

“It’s the sparrows, beggar ’em,” he said, shutting his fist; “they’re at their games agin. I’ll shoot ’em, I will. They waits till the swallers builds their nests, then they goes and turns ’em out and finishes up wi’ feathers.”

“Don’t shoot them,” I said, “they have young.”

“Indeed, sir, but I will,” cried Joseph G—. “What right has they to turn the swallers out, eh? Fair play, I says, fair play and no favour.”

Some years ago I read that the sparrows in Australia had constituted themselves a kind of plague, and in rather a strange way they stole all the hay to build their nests, and every plan, such as smoking them, and turning the garden hose on the nests, etc, had been tried in vain. We must not believe all colonists tell us. They are noted perverters of the truth. Why didn’t they retaliate and turn the sparrows into pies—a sparrow pie, they say, is a dainty dish. I do not care to eat my sparrows. I believe that killing sparrows is like killing house-flies—others come to fill up the death vacancies.

Now there are some things about sparrows that I confess I cannot quite understand. Knowing that they are often bigamists, sometimes polygamists, I am never surprised to see two or three hens helping a cock to build the family nest; but when I notice, as I have frequently done, a sparrow who has only one wife being assisted in the construction of his domicile by another gentleman sparrow, what am I to think? Who, I want to know, is the other fellow who drops round of a forenoon in a friendly kind of way with a weed in his mouth, and even gets inside and “chins” the nest. Is he a brother-in-law, or a father-in-law, or the son by a former marriage, or what? I give it up, but there is the fact, and “Facts are chiels that winna ding.”

It may not be generally known that there are bachelor sparrows, who remain bachelors all the summer from choice, and old-maid sparrows who are obliged to be so, and who sometimes build nests and sit by them looking disconsolate enough, sighing and singing “po-eete” for the poet who never comes.

Here is an anecdote with a little mystery about it that the reader may possibly be able to unravel, for I can’t. It is a little tragedy in one act, and must have been a very painful one to the principals. My splendid Newfoundland, Hurricane Bob, came down to my garden wigwam one forenoon last spring. He was whining and apparently in great distress of mind.

“Come on up here with me, master,” he said, “there are some strange goings on at the front lawn.”

I followed him, and could soon hear the pitiful cries of a sparrow, up near a spout that comes out from under the wooden eave of the tallest gable of the cottage. The dog pointed up there, continuing to whine as he did so, and evidently in grief because he couldn’t fly.

It was not long before I mastered the whole facts of the case. They were as follows:—Close by the funnel-shaped mouth of the descending spout, and supported by some branches of the wistaria, a pair of sparrows had built in the previous spring and raised several broods. It was February now, and they had come round prospecting—impressed doubtless by old associations—to see if the same nest could not be refitted, and thus do duty again. Full of excitement, the cock bird had hopped down between the woodwork of the eave and the spout, and seeing a crack about half an inch wide beneath, had attempted to come out there. He got his head through and one wing, but there he had stuck.

It was quite affecting to witness the agony and perturbation displayed by the hen bird—the poor imprisoned cock did nothing but struggle and flutter—her cries were pitiful, and every now and then she would seize her spouse by head or by wing and try to pull him through.

Meanwhile, on a twig of wistaria not a yard away sat another cock-sparrow, an interested but inactive spectator. He simply looked on, and never volunteered either assistance or a suggestion.

As soon as I could procure a ladder long enough to get up, I went to the rescue, but the poor bird’s head had drooped—he was dead; and so firmly fixed in the crack that I could neither drag him through nor push him back. The hen sparrow and the strange cock sat looking at me some little way off, but the former after this made no further attempt to relieve the cock bird. He was no more, and she must have known it. But who the mystery was the strange cock—the impassive spectator? Was he father, brother, or, dear me! was he a former lover—a rival? Did he sit there mocking the dying agony of the other bird? Did he address him thus:—“You’re booked, old man. You may kick and flutter as much as you please. I tell you you are as good as dead already. When you are gone I’ll hop into your place. This nest will suit us nicely. Us, I say, d’ye hear? It will suit us, and we will soon forget you. Good-by, old man, keep up your pecker.”

I would have torn down the old nest, but I really was curious to know if the dead sparrow’s widow would wed again, and take up house there. Surely she would never bear to pop out and in at the doorway of that nest, with the skeleton of her late lamented husband hanging out through the crack. I left the nest for a month or two, then tore it down, but no birds have ever built there since.

There are more hen than cock-sparrows, and this may account for the prevalence of polygamism in the community. As to old-maid sparrows, I have assuredly often known nests built by hens alone, but am willing to admit that these hens may be relicts, some accident may have happened to the husband. However, it is a fact that there are plenty of bachelor sparrows, who live a free and easy life all the summer, and never dream of becoming Benedicts; you see them in the gardens, and you meet them out in the fields, and they are always in company with other male sparrows of their own way of thinking.

Now every one who lives in the country is perfectly familiar with those little disturbances that often arise all of a sudden among sparrows, when about half a dozen go flying into a bush together, squabbling, bickering, and fighting with fearful ferocity. Some books gravely tell us that these squabbles are in reality courts-martial being held on some erring brother or sister of this genus Passer. I never took this for granted, and for three or four summers I have used my best endeavours to get at the true explanation of the matter, and I am satisfied they are caused by differences of opinion between Benedict and bachelor sparrows, resulting in a match “’twixt married and single,” a free fight, in which the females take part.

Female sparrows often fight most viciously together from bush to bush, but preferably on the ground. I have often seen a stand-up battle between the two wives of a bigamist sparrow. He himself would simply stand about a yard off, and look on.

“It’s no good interfering,” the cock appears to think; “it is a sad state of affairs to be sure, but what can a fellow do? I must try to manage matters differently another year.”

Sparrows may keep the same mates from year to year, and so they may arrange for pairing as early as November or December the year before, flying about with their coming queens, and roosting near them at night. But considering the number of these birds that are killed every year—by our bold sparrow-club men for example, by misguided gardeners, and by bucolic louts who net them in the ivy after nightfall for the purpose of supplying matches with the needed birds—considering the quantities of them that cats and hawks kill, and the numbers that die from frost and starvation, to say nothing of the young birds of last season, the mating time is a very busy one indeed. The cocks are then as full of fight as an Irishman on a fair day, and the hens—well they simply sit and look on.

“None but the brave deserve the fair,” they seem to say to themselves, “and it is certainly very gratifying to one’s self-esteem and respect to know that all these sanguinary battles now raging round the rose-trees and in under the laurel-bushes are about us.”

Here are a few notes I took some months ago:—A bright spring morning in March. Sunshine on the red brick walls of our cottage, sunshine on the wistaria. Wistaria not in blossom yet.—N.B. Blossom comes before leaves, though it is now covered with long soft downy buds, tipped with a suspicion of mauve. The forenoon is quite warm, delightful to be out of doors. Yet at seven o’clock there was hoar-frost on the ground, and thin ice on the dogs’ water. The sparrows are unusually lively, and bickering constantly—especially the cocks. Yonder a fight has commenced, just under the eave; it rages there a few moments, then down tumble the belligerents from a height of twenty feet, holding viciously on to each other’s jaws all the while with the ferocity of bulldogs. Now they struggle together on the lawn, lunging and pecking, and wrestling with wings outspread and legs everywhere. There are beads of blood about their eyes, and tiny drops on the grass. What a serious matter it seems! Death or victory! they think and care for nothing else. I believe I could steal up and put my hat over the pair of them. “England’s difficulty,” says my Persian cat, creeping up, “is Ireland’s opportunity.” No you won’t, puss. Go away at once, or I’ll call for Collie to you.

But see, one sparrow has triumphed. Vae Victis! He chases the conquered and breathless bird from bush to bush, till his own lungs give out, and he returns open-mouthed but glorious, and flies up to the tree where sits the cosy wee hen that all the row has been about. He is going to say something or make a proposal of some kind, when back flies the conquered cock, and the battle is renewed with double vigour. This is a longer fight than last, but victory once more declares itself on the side of the former champion, and back he flies again to the trysting twig—to find what? Why, another fellow who has been actually taking a mean advantage of his absence in the battle-field, and pruning his feathers in front of his hen. There is another fight there and then, and perhaps there may be many more to come. But in the end all things will be well, and the fittest survive.

Round the corner are a pair of birds already matched and mated; they are at peace with all the world, and can afford to sit quietly on their twigs and witness the fighting and the fun.

The cocks this lovely morning seem striving to do all they can to make themselves conspicuous. The hens, on the other hand, sit quietly on their twigs, their morsels of tails at an angle of about 45 degrees, their little beaks in the air, and their feathers all balled out to catch the sunshine.

To one of these independent little mites a black bib sidles up. He addresses her in wretchedly bad grammar, but what can you expect of a sparrow?

“It’s you and me this season, ain’t it?” he says.

She tosses her bill higher in air than it was before, as she replies—

“Oh dear no, sir. I couldn’t think of changing my state.”

“Here, you!” cries another black bib, hopping on to the same twig, “it’s you and me, if you please.”

Then another fearful fight begins between the two black bibs.

And so the fun goes on.

But this I have observed: Before mating actually takes place the male sparrow often gives the female a thrashing. Well, perhaps it is as well they should have their little differences out before marriage instead of after. Quien Sabe?

Early in June my sparrows may be seen hopping or flying about with sprays of blue forget-me-not in their bills. A lady visitor at my house was much struck with seeing this last summer.

“Whatever do they carry flowers for?” she asked laughingly; “your sparrows are more refined in their tastes than any birds I ever even read of.”

But the explanation is simple enough. They cut and carry away the sprays of forget-me-not for sake of the seeds that are already half ripe at the lower end of them.

A little innocent girl asked me the same question, her pretty eyes filled with sweet surprise, and I wickedly replied, “There is going to be a grand fête of some kind to-day among my sparrows, and they are going to decorate their nests.” She simply answered, “Oh!” but she looked believing.

In this short paper I have not said one-half of what I should wish to say about these interesting and independent wee birds that follow and take up their abode with mankind wheresoever he goes in the wide world, but I hope I have said enough to gain for sparrows a little more consideration and a little less cruelty than they generally meet with.

“But they are so destructive?” Yes, I knew some one would say that. Yet I maintain that they do far more good than harm in the world. If space were given me I could prove this. Meanwhile here is an extract from Land and Water, which is well worth reading and considering:—

“What the swallow tribe do in killing innumerable flies in country parks, the sparrow does to some extent in the gardens and squares of London, especially in its more immediate suburbs. All the sparrows have got nests, many containing callow young, a few ‘flyers,’ and some are still sitting on the eggs. An old sparrow might be seen perched on the top of a house, and presently with a graceful motion the bird ‘rises to a passing fly’ and secures the morsel. If the bird or birds had got young in the water-spout hard by, or in the hole often left by builders missing a brick at the end of a row of houses, in ivy, or in the thick foliage of the Virginia creeper, the young birds get the ‘catch.’ Besides this fly-catching, I have noticed for the last few weeks the sparrows working in every evergreen bush, also in jessamines, in lilac-trees, and especially in the crevices of old walls, in search of spiders, earwigs, green-fly, daddy long-legs, etc. The adult birds seem to prefer this wall and bush ‘food’ more than crumbs of bread regularly thrown out for them, except where they have got a nestful of hungry youngsters, and then the latter get some of both. But how hard the sparrows work, and the starlings too!”

Now let us go a little farther from home. Some years ago the English sparrow was introduced into that country of free institutions called the United States. The sparrow has certainly made himself at home there. He has increased and multiplied a millionfold, and now America wants to “Extirpate the vipers.”

But the Americans do not always know what is good for them. Example: They have slain all their big game (where will you find a herd of wild buffalo now?), they have killed nearly all their birds, and well-nigh cut down their last bit of genuine forest.

Yes, the sparrow makes itself at home in America. Some months ago I was sitting in one of the beautiful open squares in New York. The sparrows were plentiful enough all about and enjoyed themselves very much, especially in flying through the playing fountains; it must be delightful to take a bath on the wing. A tall Yankee was sitting near me with outstretched legs. A sparrow alighted on the toe of his boot; he wore Number 10’s. He eyed it curiously and critically. I smiled.

“A cheeky bird,” I couldn’t help remarking.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply, “but—it’s British. That accounts.”

I “dried up” after that.

But even in America the British sparrow has made a few friends, as the following extract from Forest and Stream will prove:—

“A Good Word for the Sparrows.—I send you by this mail a lot of leaves of the maple growing in front of my office, which when gathered were literally covered with insects. What attracted my attention to them was the busy action of some two dozen English sparrows, hopping here and there in the tree, peering under the leaves, and savagely feeding on something. An inspection revealed the cause of their eagerness, and the cause of the early shedding of the leaves. Examine these vermin and tell us what they are. The sparrows were so busy they would scarcely keep out of the reach of my hand. I called the attention of several gentlemen, who watched them for some time. This proves (to me) the insectivorous habits of the English sparrow.”

Sparrows are treated with systematic cruelty by many in this country; they are trapped and shot wholesale and at all seasons, and not only are their nests torn down with the eggs in them, but even when filled with young, and these are allowed to expire—mere little naked things—on the ground.

Sparrow matches are a disgrace to our country, and to those who engage in them. Every reader will surely admit this much. As for members of sparrow clubs, I never saw one, and Heaven forbid I ever may.