258 BULLETIN" 16 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



table food, consisting of fruit, leaves, flowers, shoots, seeds, grain, and 

 miscellaneous vegetable material. It is especially fond of rose hips, 

 which comprised 11.01 per cent of the food. When the deep snow 

 causes scarcity of other supplies, the sumac affords the prairie hen 

 with abundant food. Seeds make up 14.87 per cent of the annual 

 diet, of which grass seeds form 1.03 per cent, seeds of various polyg- 

 onums 8.49 per cent, and miscellaneous weed seeds 5.35 per cent. 



The prairie chicken eats more grain than any of the other native 

 gallinaceous birds; the food examined by the Biological Survey was 

 31.06 per cent grain. The stomach of one bird shot in June in 

 Nebraska contained 100 kernels of corn and 500 grains of wheat. 

 Buckwheat, barley, oats, and millet are relished, but corn appears to 

 be the favorite cereal, amounting to 19.45 per cent of the food. 

 Wheat was next in order represented by 11. Gl per cent. Like other 

 gallinaceous birds, it is fond of mast such as hazelnuts and acorns, 

 though it obtains much less than the ruffed grouse. A bird shot in 

 Minnesota in March had bolted 28 scarlet-oak acorns. 



An analysis of organic material in the food of IT prairie chickens 

 collected in Wisconsin for the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, 

 chiefly in fall, revealed that about 28 per cent of the food was animal 

 and 72 per cent vegetable matter. Gravel constituted 6 per cent of 

 the combined organic and inorganic material of the crop and stomach 

 contents. The average weight of the crop contents was 25.7 grams ; 

 the maximum 83 grams. The average weight of the stomach con- 

 tents was 14.3 grams, and the largest quantity found in any one 

 stomach weighed 23.1 grams. 



There were 84 kinds of vegetable matter and 82 kinds of animal 

 matter represented in crops and stomachs of the prairie chickens 

 collected in Wisconsin. Arranged in order of the percentages of 

 the entire food eaten by the birds, the 25 more important foods 

 follow: Short-horned grasshoppers, 26.7; ragweed, 11; oats, 10.8; 

 clover, 7.7; black bindweed, 6.2; acorns, 4.5; greenbrier, 3.6; dogwood, 

 3.5; crickets, 3.3; buckwheat, 3.1; bramble, 3.1; blueberries, 2.4; rose, 

 1.7 ; hawkweed, 1.4 ; chokeberry, 1 ; galls, 0.94 ; ants and wasps, 0.88 ; 

 poison ivy, 0.80; birch, 0.80; pin cherry, 0.64; woody debris, 0.64; 

 bunchberry, 0.53; wild black cherry, 0.53; smartweed, 0.47; pigeon 

 grass, 0.47. 



It will be seen that the chief difference between the above list of 

 foods and the results published by the Biological Survey in 1905 is 

 the absence of corn in the recent list. In Doctor Judd's list corn 

 made up 19.45 per cent of the entire contents of all the birds 

 examined. This may be accounted for by the change in methods of 

 farming. In the past, corn was husked in the field and much grain 

 was accidently left behind by the harvesters. To-day, in Wisconsin, 



