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Rh THE FOOD OF YOUNG SPARROWS.

The sparrow lays five or six greyish-white eggs spotted with brown and ash-colour, and has frequently three broods in the year, the first being hatched towards the end of May. Young sparrows in the nest are generally fed on caterpillars and other insects, particularly in August, yet a good many may be opened in June and July without finding any in them. The parent sparrows will begin to feed them on caterpillars when but a day old, but they seem to discontinue the diet a little time before they leave the nest, though, on the other hand, some young sparrows, which were quite ready to leave the nest, examined in Norfolk, did contain a few small caterpillars. But of this I am sure, that while very young their diet is quite as much unripe corn and vegetable matter as caterpillars. Even at the age of one day a sparrow will feed its young one on a grain of ripe corn. Say that a young sparrow eats 14 or 15 young caterpillars a day, that is probably as good a guess as we can make. If this only went on for ten days the sum-total destroyed would be very vast, and some of the caterpillars of very injurious kinds,