1912.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 355 



Hodge, C. F. [Food of Young Ruffed Grouse.] Rep. Comm. 

 Fisheries and Game, Mass., 1907 (1908), p. 70. 



Two died from swallowing objects too large to pass into gizzard 

 (black cricket and large spider). This certainly was not the 

 cause of death. A young ruffed grouse's digestive apparatus 

 would quickly dispose of two such soft-bodied insects. 

 Hodge, C. F. [Report .... relative to the Propagation of Ruffed 

 Grouse and Quail in Confinement.] Rep. Comm. Fisheries and 

 Game, Mass., 1908 (1909), pp. 60-69. 



On pp. 60 and 61, Hodge says: "I encountered a new difficulty 

 against which we must be on our guard in the future. Striped 

 plant bugs were abundant on the grass, and were easily obtained 

 by sweeping with insect nets. The young chicks [of ruffed 

 grouse] ate them greedily, and simply went to sleep and died as 

 if they had been chloroformed. These bugs had the strong 

 odor of squash bugs, by feeding which to toads Conradi found 

 that thev died as though they had been poisoned with chloro- 

 form." 



"Conradi found that five or six squash bugs might be sufficient 

 to kill a toad, and Miss Morse has fed as many as eleven to a 

 bob white at a single meal. Plant bugs are not so strong as 

 squash bugs, and I have observed a toad eat over 250 of them in 

 a day without showing ill effects. Still, while this evidence is 

 not conclusive, .... I think that we should be more careful in 

 future not to feed too many strong-smelling bugs to young 

 grouse chicks." 



Dr. Hodge's experience with the young grouse, and the bluebird, 

 above noted, being killed by eating certain insects, is unsupported 

 by other testimony, and the observations leading to his con- 

 clusions are not scientifically exact. 



The reference to Conradi's experiments is incorrect. The toads 

 when confined in small bottles were killed by the vaporized 

 secretions of squash bugs; they were not killed by eating the 

 bugs. The feeding of bobwhites is described on pp. 64-67. He 

 justly remarks: "The most careful artificial feeding of a flock in 

 confinement cannot approach in variety the food of wild birds" 

 (p. 64). Reports of the Massachusetts Commissioners on 

 Fisheries and Game for other years contain notes on the feeding 

 of game birds in captivity, but not in relation to "protected" 

 insects. 

 Hyslop, J. A. The False Wireworms of the Pacific Northwest. 

 Bid. 95, U. S. Bur. Ent., Part V, 1912. 



In the discussion of natural enemies (p. 84) are reports on experi- 

 mental feedings of adult Eleodes chiefly to various gallinaceous 

 birds. Chickens, ducks, the Reeves pheasant, and silver pheas- 

 ant ate the beetles, while turkeys refused them, and golden and 

 Lady Amherst pheasants would not notice them. The author 

 says, "However, these birds seemed quite annoyed by our 

 presence and might have eaten the beetles had they not been 

 frightened." 



