Note 76 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Apropos of the sparrow—a single pair of which, according to Michelet, p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred caterpillars or coleoptera in a week—I take from the Record, an English religious newspaper, of December 15, 1862, the following article communicated to a country paper by a person who signs himself "A real friend to the farmer:"
"Crawley Sparrow Club.—The annual dinner took place at the George Inn on Wednesday last. The first prize was awarded to Mr. I. Redford, Worth, having destroyed within the last year 1,467. Mr. Heayman took the second with 1,448 destroyed. Mr. Stone, third, with 982 affixed. Total destroyed, 11,944. Old birds, 8,663; young ditto, 722; eggs, 2,556."
This trio of valiant fowlers, and their less fortunate—or rather less unfortunate, but not therefore less guilty—associates, have rescued by their prowess, it may be, a score of pecks of grain from being devoured by the voracious sparrow, but every one of the twelve thousand hatched and unhatched birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant prejudice, would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects that destroy the grain. Mr. Redford, Mr. Heayman, and Mr. Stone ought to contribute the value of the bread they have wasted to the fund for the benefit of the Lancashire weavers; and it is to be hoped that the next Byron will satirize the sparrowcide as severely as the first did the prince of anglers, Walton, in the well known lines:
"The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."