"That some guess may be formed of the possible extent of good or evil occasioned by small birds," says Bishop Stanley, "we annex the result of our own observations on the precise quantity of food consumed by certain species, either for their own support or that of their young, remarking at the same time that the difference observed in the instances may be partly accounted for by the different quantity of food required by young birds at different periods of their growth.
"Sparrows feed their young thirty-six times in an hour, which, calculating at the rate of fourteen hours a day, in the long days of spring and summer, gives 3,500 times per week, a number corroborated on the authority of another writer, who calculated the number of caterpillars destroyed in a week to be about 3,400.
"Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little green grubs from gooseberry-trees twenty-three times in an hour, which, at the same calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a week, but more grubs than one were usually imported each time.
"Chaffinches at the rate of about thirty-five times an hour for five or six times together, when they would pause, and not return for intervals of eight or ten minutes; the food was green caterpillars.
"The Titmouse sixteen times in an hour.
"The comparative weight consumed was as follows:—
"A Greenfinch, provided with eighty grains by weight of wheat, in twenty-four hours consumed seventy-nine; but of a thick paste, made of flour, eggs, &c., it consumed upwards of one hundred grains.
"A Goldfinch consumed about ninety grains of Canary seed in twenty-four hours.
THE GREAT TIT (Parus major).