A. F. C.-H. EvERSHED 67 



caterpillars, swift-moth caterpillars, grass-moth caterpillars, the larvae 

 and puparia of various muscid flies, very many Bibio grubs, a few 

 imagos of Empis, Tipula, Thereva and Asilus, Capsid bugs, green-fly, 

 frog-hop23ers and Scutellarid bugs. 



The following analysis may be of interest. Seeing that there were 

 311 crops in all and that 90 of them (sent in lots of 40 and 50 with the 

 contents mingled) could only be treated as two, there are 223 separate 

 consignments. Table I shews the number which contained each of the 

 above six categories of food, arranged in the order of their occurrence: 



Table I. 



That is, 150 crops contained the leaves of plants, many of them con- 

 taining other kinds of food as well. 



119 crops contained cereal grains or agricultural seeds of some sort, 

 but a careful consideration of them, as I shall explain later on, seems 

 to reduce the real cases of injury to 12 birds, there being good evidence 

 in the remaining cases that the corn was either hand-fed or picked up 

 in the stubble, and the other farm seeds obtained from various unimpor- 

 tant soui'ces and not from the growing crop. If I am right in this, and 

 if the ofience of stealing from the stubble is admitted to be a trivial one, 

 the damage done by pheasants to growing agricultural crops seems 

 almost negligible. 



Unfortunately the number of crops received month by month was 

 very unequal, so that while we have the evidence of 135 crops as to what 

 the birds were feeding on in -Tanuary, our knowledge of their June 

 operations rests on the evidence of seven crops only. Still no month is 

 unrepresented, and a full record has been kept of the crop contents in 

 each case. They are given in Table II. 



Table II will indicate the method adopted in recording the crop 

 contents of each bird, and the general nature of the food during each 

 month of the year, but it is desirable to examine closely all the cases of 

 apparent injury to farm crops. In Table III are to be found all the 

 birds whose crops contained agricultural seeds other than hand-fed 

 grain, with comments on each case. The majority of them prove to be 

 of no importance, but attention is called, by the use of heavy type, to 

 instances of genuine injury. 



5—2 



