section, which is given by the writers he so loudly condemns ('House-Sparrow,' p. 12 et seq.).
The Sparrow does harm in many other ways, but these need not be here considered: the chief charge against it is that it eats corn,—corn when it is newly sown, corn soft and milky, corn ready and ripe to be harvested, and corn which is thrown out for fowls.
The Sparrow is a bird which is annually increasing in this country, as it is in other countries where it has been introduced, and the question is becoming a serious one for farmers, who, with the present low price of wheat, are hard put to make two ends meet, without this new and feathered item against them in their balance-sheet.
Recent investigations have conclusively shown that the Sparrow does not destroy nearly so much insect-life as was supposed[1]. It rests with its advocates to show that this amount of insect life (whatever its exact proportion may be) would, if spared, do more harm than is done by the Sparrows themselves to corn. Old Sparrows, as a rule, do not eat insects [2]. The larvæ which form the customary food of young Sparrows are, for the most part, species which prey on shrubs and plants, but not on corn, such as Teras contaminana, Triphæna pronuba, and Pontia brassiccæ [3].
- ↑ In support of this statement I need only refer to the table of dissections ('House-Sparrow,' p. 12 et seq.).
- ↑ But they may occasionally be seen to catch and give their young ones insects, long after those young ones are able to fly. It may here be mentioned that Mr. T. Wood has observed adult Sparrows picking Sitones (Weevils) off peas, and eating them themselves. The Sitones, he explains, "are the small beetles which nibble away the leaves of beans and peas, frequently reducing the plants to mere skeletons" ('Our Bird Allies,' p. 164).
- ↑ For the identification of these larvæ I am indebted to Mr. C.G. Barrett.
