xxii Journal of Proceedings.
only noticeable effects produced by sparrows near villages, houses, and
roads. Sparrows also do much mischief in gardens—by feeding off young
peas, lettuces, Ac, eating green peas from the pods, stripping gooseberry
bushes of their fruit buds, and destroying crocus flowers. The question
remains whether they do good enough in gardens to make up for such
misdeeds there. For some years I carefully investigated the question of
sparrows' food, examining that taken out of thousands, old and young,
killed at all sorts of times and places. The general result was that the
old ones contained little else but corn, rarely an insect. The young are
fed with a great variety of food—corn, green and ripe, green peas, insects,
&c. At least 95 per cent. of a sparrow's food during its whole life seems
to be corn.
" To prove that sparrows are really useful, it is not enough to show that
they destroy some insects ; it must also be shown that in their absence
other birds would not destroy them as effectively. My object in letting no
sparrows live anywhere near my house has been partly to get a better
practical test of their utility than any amount of examination of the food
in their crops. Sparrows having been almost entirely absent from my
place for years, if they took insects which other birds will not, such
insects would increase, and the sparrows killed there would show this.
Now it has been quite as unusual to find an insect in an old sparrow there
as elsewhere. In fifty of all ages, from the time they first feed them-
selves, killed there one summer with food in their crops, this consisted of
corn, milky, green, and ripe, and sometimes green peas; only two small
insects were found in the whole number. The old ones, however, eating
few insects anywhere, this was not test enough, but if any insects were
the peculiar prey of sparrows, and had increased, any nestlings there
should be full of them. A pair or two of sparrows have therefore gene-
rally been allowed to have a nest in or near my garden, and nearly every
year young ones have been taken there and the food in them carefully
examined with a lens. It varied greatly, but certainly there were not
more insects, if as many, as where sparrows abound. Of caterpillars,
supposed to be kept down by sparrows, only two small ones, and those in
callow birds, have been found during the twelve years. On the whole, the
deduction from these tests, so far as they go, seems to be be that the
insects given to their young by the sparrows, were they 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, where not displaced by those ' parasites on civilisation,' the
sparrows, keep down the insects much more effectively than the latter.
After the absence of sparrows for twelve years, everything in my garden
seems to do as well as elsewhere ; and many things better. For instance,
the young peas want no protection beyond trapping the mice ; except one
year, when the titmice took it into their heads to eat them; the green
peas are not taken from the pods, and, unless bullfinches come and live in
the garden in winter, the gooseberry buds are not picked out, consequently
we have had extraordinary crops of that fruit for some years past.
" The general results of my tests seem to prove at least that no one need
fear that he does any harm if he shoots every sparrow which goes near a
martin's nest. Whether it would be easier to protect the martins by
killing such sparrows only, or all those about the premises, I cannot say ;
but the former plan can easily be tried by those who, for any reason, do
not wish to kill more sparrows than is necessary.
" About my house are plenty of swallows ; that they are not displaced by
the great numbers of martins shows that the two birds live on different
food, and that we want both to keep down different insects. As martins,
in all places where they can keep their nests, are at least twice as