CATALOGUE OF VERTEBRATES. 533 



vember 1st they have all gone south, frequenting rice plantations 

 generally. 



" Red- winged blackbirds are always looked upon as injurious 

 to agriculture, and treated accordingly. The Patent Office Re- 

 port for 1856 — Agriculture — advocates their destruction as an 

 injurious bird, but we doubt very much if the author of the 

 article above referred to ever suffered from their attacks any 

 more than he or any other has from the predatory visits of that 

 largely useful and wholly inoffensive bird, the rose-breasted 

 grosbeak, which also is considered as deserving of persecution. 

 * Red-wings ' do take corn up when it is planted, and do feed 

 upon it when in the milky state, but their diet of grubs, worms 

 and noxious insects, throughout the greater part of the year, far 

 more than compensates for any injury they do the corn-crop. 

 The ' red-wing ' following the plow in early spring, and careless 

 of the plowman, devours the grubs the plow exposes, preserves 

 more grain by each worm destroyed than the bird will itself eat, 

 in August, an hundred times over. The 'red-wings' are about 

 as frequently innocent as guilty, when accused of ' taking up ' 

 the corn, the grubs being the real offenders, and their destruc- 

 tiveness, when the corn is in a milky state, is largely exaggerated, 

 and if they are killed at this time the contents of their crop will 

 show that four-fifths of their food has been the insects always 

 to be found on corn-stalks, and the angle- worms that the loose 

 ground about the corn invariably contains." — [C. C. A.] 



STURNBLLA, Vieill. 

 S. magna, L. Meadow Lark. 



Brownish and much streaked above ; chiefly yellow below 

 a black crescent on breast; bill long; tail short, with acute 

 feathers ; crown feathers bristle tipped. Length, 10 inches 

 tail, 3i inches. 



" Resident. In the spring they are in a measure gregarious 

 and frequent the meadows. About the middle of May they 

 pair and build a nest of grass, on the ground, raising two broods 

 the young of the latter brood not flying before August 15th 

 About this time they become again partially gregarious, and in 

 a measure forsake the meadows for the uplands, generally 

 frequenting the stubble-fields. In October they are frequently 



