It is true that the common sparrows multiply too fast and their numbers must be thinned down. This, many a bird-loving landowner and farmer does in various ways. The late Lord Lilford declared the most humane way was to pull down all the nests within man’s reach. There would still be plenty left, in inaccessible places. A humane farmer, the present writer knows in Hampshire, a great wheat-grower, gives the lads round threepence a score for all the sparrows’ eggs they can bring to him. Sparrow-clubs--save the mark!--are schools for cruelty. In one Lancashire parish which I know the vicar encourages the Jackdaw, allowing it to build even in his church steeple, because wherever that bird is, sparrows become more scarce, their young suiting that bird’s palate well. Man has foolishly upset the balance of nature by destroying the natural enemies of the sparrow. Take two neighbouring estates we know in Yorkshire; on the one sparrows, blackbirds, bullfinches and other birds are remorselessly shot during the fruit season; on the other the use of the gun is forbidden. In the garden and orchard of the latter there is always a far greater allowance of fruit than in those of the former. Only where their natural enemies have become scarce ought man to set his wits to work to compass the destruction of a species. CHAPTER II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BIRD. Let us now consider the bird’s bodily structure. Every child knows that the bird’s body is covered with feathers or down, and that what, in the case of mammals are fore-feet, in birds are wings with which they fly. There are as many kinds of flight as there are kinds of birds. It depends for the most part on the nature of the bird, in a smaller degree on the structure of the wing. The wing of the Swallow (Plate VIII._a_) is pointed like that of the Peregrine Falcon, and is adapted for rapid flight. Both these birds secure their prey on the wing, and could not, therefore, live otherwise. The wing of the Partridge is, on the contrary, rounded; this bird does not cut through the air, but can only raise itself in flight with rapid fluttering of the wings, and with a sudden loud “whirr” which makes considerable noise if the covey is a large one. The wing of the Partridge, therefore, is not at all adapted for enabling the bird to catch its prey flying, but only for moving from place to place, where it picks up its food walking. From this we learn that the various kinds of wings correspond to various ways of flight and that each bird works out its destiny in its own way. It is suggestive of the organisation of an army, composed of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and other divisions. These also have different kinds of functions, which are necessary both [Illustration: (_a_) SWALLOW’S WING; (_b_) THAT OF THE PARTRIDGE.] individually and in combination, and the one cannot supply the place of the other.