LAND BIRDS. 421 



The Crow is proverbially shrewd and shy and doubtless succeeds in 

 rearing its young in safety in the great majority of cases. In the latitude 

 of Lansing the young leave the nest by the middle of June, and there is no 

 reason to suppose that more than one brood is reared in the season. 



The economic status of the Crow has been in dispute for more than a 

 hundred years, and in spite of all the work which has been done in the 

 attempt to settle the question, not a few points still remain obscure. Be- 

 tween the years 1886 and 1894 the author made a continuous and minute 

 study of the food of Crows, based primarily upon the examination of more 

 than 900 stomachs brought together at the Department of Agriculture in 

 Washington, and this work has been supplemented by more than seventeen 

 years of observation and examination in this state. For a detailed account 

 of the food of the Crow as shown by stomach examination the reader is 

 referred to the author's work on the Crow published by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture in 1895.* The following abstract and summary 

 of this investigation may be useful to those to whom the bulletin itself is 

 not accessible: 



The writer personally examined, classified and estimated the stomach 

 contents of the 909 Crows on which the investigation was primarily based. 

 The remains of insects found in these stomachs, after careful study in our 

 own laboratory, were submitted to the Entomological Division of the 

 Department of Agriculture and were determined by the members of that 

 division, Mr. E. A. Schwarz submitting a report upon the insect food of the 

 Crow which was embodied in the bulletin as finally published. 



As a result of the detailed investigation of these stomachs and of the 

 vast amount of other evidence gathered, the writer became fully convinced 

 that the Crow on the whole is far more injurious than beneficial. The 

 stomach examinations showed that the average amount of animal food 

 in winter was 33 percent and in summer 67 percent, while the average 

 amount of vegetable food was exactly complementary, that is, vegetable 

 food formed 67 percent of the winter food and but 33 percent of the summer 

 food. We may say therefore, speaking roughly, that the Crow's food for 

 the year consists of nearly equal parts of afiimal and vegetable substances, 

 the animal predominating in summer and the vegetable in winter. 



Much the larger part of the animal food consists of insects, the average 

 for the year amounting to about 24 percent. The proportion howeve 

 varies widely according to season. Thus in January insects form less 

 than 3 percent of the food, while in April they form 53 percent, in May 

 49 percent and in June 41 percent. This large percentage of insect foocl, 

 and the common assumption that all insects are injurious, leads the careless 

 observer to conclude that the Crow must be necessarily a very beneficial 

 bird. As a matter of fact only a small part of the insects eaten are injurious, 

 many are beneficial, others are neutral, and a large number — whether good 

 or bad — are dead before they are picked up and hence have no bearing 

 on the question. Furthermore the stomach examinations prove beyond 

 doubt that the Crow must be held blameworthy for this neglect to eat at 

 all many of the most common and injurious insects which attack the farmer's 

 crops. The following extracts from Mr. Schwarz' report will give a fair 

 idea of the insect food: 



"The insect food is almost exclusively composed of terrestrial species, tiiat is, such as 

 are found on the surface of the ground, or hide during the daytime at tlie base of plants 



* Barrows and Schwarz. — Tho Common Crow in its Relation to Agriculture. Bull. No. 6, 18'J5, 

 Division of Ornithology ami Mammalogy, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



