. Our bird allies . rvices are even greater. I do not say that underno circumstances should it ever be killed, but I dosay that even its partial extermination would be littleshort of a national calamity. And I ask the readerto follow me through the evidence and arguments,both for and against the bird, which I am about tolay before him, and to reserve his final judgmentuntil he shall have fully acquainted himself with allthe facts of the case. Were the testimony upon both sides of the questionto be carefully collected, there can be no doubt what-ever that by far the greater proportion would tel
. Our bird allies . rvices are even greater. I do not say that underno circumstances should it ever be killed, but I dosay that even its partial extermination would be littleshort of a national calamity. And I ask the readerto follow me through the evidence and arguments,both for and against the bird, which I am about tolay before him, and to reserve his final judgmentuntil he shall have fully acquainted himself with allthe facts of the case. Were the testimony upon both sides of the questionto be carefully collected, there can be no doubt what-ever that by far the greater proportion would tellagainst the bird. For one witness in favour of thesparrow, indeed, there are twenty against him; and THE sparrow; its vices. 153 thus many would be led to believe that, with so pre-ponderating a weight of evidence upon the side ofthe prosecution, there can be no reasonable groundto doubt that the adverse judgment generally re-corded is the only true and possible one. But, in thus leaping to conclusions, we forget a. The Sparrow. very important point, and that is, that the immensemass of this testimony is invalidated by the fact thatit proceeds from farmers; and farmers, as a class,are as little to be depended upon in such matters asalmost any body of men upon the face of the their verdict is not based upon original obser-vations, but is merely the outcome of the ingrainedprejudice against the bird with which they enter 152 OUR BIRD ALLIES. upon agricultural life, and which is itself the resultof traditions handed down from generation to genera-tion, and accepted as established facts which it wouldbe little less than heresy to doubt. And this not inthe case of the sparrow alone, which is merely onevictim out of many. The mole is useful in four dis-tinct ways, but the mole is persecuted by nineteenfarmers out of every twenty. Titmice are whollybeneficial throughout their lives, but titmice are shotdown in hundreds. And these, as every naturalistknows, are by no means i
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1887
