296 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 3 



the account in its favor. To do our work we are at liberty to choose 

 among the many forces of living nature those most effective, most 

 easily controlled and most agreeable. On all these counts, for de- 

 struction of weed seeds and insects, the bobwhite leaves nothing to 

 be desired. A bird that takes so many injurious insects is welcome 

 to the beneficial ones as well. Apparently, if we could have enough 

 bobwhites, they would leave nothing for the beneficial insects to do. 



Second, the tendency at present, over a large portion of its nat- 

 ural range is strongly toward extinction of the bobwhite. To reverse 

 this tendency will require careful study of the problems involved and 

 vigorous and concerted effort. It is generally recognized that ex- 

 termination of natural enemies is the beginning of game protec- 

 tion. For the bobwhite, cats go farther toward accounting for scar- 

 city and extinction of the birds than sportsmen and all other nat- 

 ural enemies combined. Crows, rats, skunks, weasels, minks and sev- 

 eral of the hawks and owls, especially the three first, are enemies which 

 must be controlled, if the species is to increase anywhere, or if the 

 birds are even to hold their own; and no one should attempt to in- 

 troduce stock for the purpose of colonization until the ground has 

 been thoroughly gone over and all vermin exterminated. Although 

 protected by cages, cats have repeatedly broken up nests by fright- 

 ening off the brooding birds at night, and in one instance a cat dis- 

 turbed a pair with a brood of fifteen chicks and all but three were 

 dead next morning, chilled in the wet grass. One such occurrence 

 shows that the damage a cat may do is only limited by the number 

 of birds she is able to find. She might as easily have scared up a 

 dozen broods in a night as one, and still, with cats ranging at will 

 everywhere, we pretend to wonder why the bobwhite is so scarce. 



The paper is, further, an illustration of the possibilites of investigat- 

 ing the food of a species by the feeding test method. The striking 

 feature is the quantitative results, the day's works, but qualitatively 

 also the fact that so many species could be added to the dietary 

 of a bird already so carefully studied by the method of crop examina- 

 tion suggests that the feeding test method may with profit be applied 

 to many species of birds. The method is sure to yield in the near 

 future much more complete results on the side of insects destroyed. 

 In fact, many species of insects were eaten, as they were swept up in 

 the nets, that were not definitely identified. 



The present paper is printed in the hope of educating the public 

 and of furnishing support for the strong movement already afoot for 

 the more adequate protection of the bobwhite. It would seem that 

 all who read it must agree with the author 's conclusion : 



