Another individual, writing from Gray's Inn, attests to the foregoing assertions, but attributes these onslaughts to the town bird. The London bloom is specially attractive to the London sparrow, while in gardens remote from London, and surrounding it, plenty of yellow crocuses bloom, and are undisturbed. According to another writer, the leaves of the bird-cherry are eagerly attacked by the caterpillar of the pale-spotted ermine moth, during certain summers, to such an extent that the trees become ugly and stripped of their foliage by the middle, or end of July. Although the appetite of the sparrow can accommodate itself to nearly all kinds of food, yet it cannot be denied that it is, betimes, quite capricious. In autumn, the Guelder-rose, which adorns the English thicket with its beautiful red berries, presents an attractive and tempting sight, but birds seem to care very little for such fruit. Evidence, quite cumulative in its character, could be adduced to sustain the preceding statements, but enough has been given to prove the sparrow's destructive propensities. The bulk of testimony bearing upon this matter, which has appeared in Nature for many years past, points the same way.
If these birds are not destructive in a high degree, why begrudge them the grain which they pilfer? Why should the English peasant lad be employed, at a mere pittance, from early morning until the sun has gone down, armed with his clappers, to frighten away these greedy pilferers from the ruddy grain ? Even before the days of "Little Boy Blue," of famous memory, down to the present time, have the same watchfulness and care been bestowed upon the fields of ripened grain, to guard them against their attacks:
