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326 usurpation so tamely. If they are not capable of combining together in order to expel a stranger from the colony, this speaks little for their intelligence, as they have, at least, been generally two to one. This is a good working majority, and why, under such circumstances, an impudent sparrow should be allowed to sit quietly in the home whereinto he has intruded, I cannot quite understand. But so it is, or so, at least, it has been, in my own experience.

But I must not wrong the sparrow. Let me recall that word "impudent," and bury still more deeply another one, to wit, "unscrupulous," that I was about to make use of. A sparrow, when he thus acts, is simply annexing territory, and should have all the credit of forbearance and self-sacrifice that belongs to such an act. His motives in doing so are, no doubt, as creditable as are those which restrain him from acting similarly in the case of more powerful birds, and if a doubt of this should ever cross his mind, he need only read a newspaper or two and listen to some speeches in "the House." He will know the integrity of his own heart—then.

It seems wonderful that a bird of the swallow tribe—so aerial, and without any special structural adaptation for burrowing—should be capable of driving horizontal shafts into the face of a bank or pit, to the length, sometimes, of seven or even, it is said, nine feet. Though the excavations be in sand, yet this is often of a very firm consistency, and, moreover, in many pits, the face of which had been largely tunnelled by these birds, sand was a good deal mingled with a fairly stiff clay. Though I have not been able to watch the process of excavation from