48 The Food Relations of the Carabidce and Cocdnellidce. 



The combination of these various tables into the final one given 

 will tend to cori-ect the deficiencies of the separate exhibits, and the 

 averages of that table will consequently be found to represent 

 more closely the general food of the family than either of the 

 others. 



Continuing the comparison of the three separate tables, we find 

 that the beetles represented by the first had taken insects to the 

 amount of twenty-six per cent.; that those from the orchard had 

 about doubled this ratio; while those from the cabbage field fell 

 a little short of it. This last fact is probably related to the time 

 of the year when these beetles were taken — the middle of April 

 in a very late spring, when insect life in general was but just 

 beginning to stir abroad. The ratios of Diptera, Coleoptera, and 

 Ilemiptera, were but trivial in all these groups, and not worth 

 separate mention. The extraordinary difficulty of determining 

 the elements of the vegetable food from the minute fragments 

 found in the stomachs of these beetles, makes it impossible to 

 enter into much detail with respect to this. The miscellaneous 

 collections and those from the cabbage field had found a little 

 over half their food in the structures of plants, while those from 

 the orchard had obtained from this source somewhat less than a 

 quarter. Pollen of exogenous plants, which will be found to form 

 so large a ratio of the food of the family next to be considered, 

 appeared here only in three of the specimens, and amounted to 

 but three per cent, of the entire food of the first group. These 

 beetles fed much more largely on graminaceous plants, the recog- 

 nizable tissues of which amounted to about seventeen per cent, 

 in the first group, and eight in each of the special col- 

 lections. Funm were reckoned at about one-tenth of the food of 

 the beetles included in the first collection, and only two per cent, 

 of those from the orchard. The spores of the omnipresent Hel- 

 minthosporium make the most important contribution to this 

 element of the food, but a number of other genera were recog- 

 nized. 



A few words will suffice for the final table, summarizing the 

 data relating to all the collections, from whatever source derived. 

 This table presents the ratios from one hundred and seventy-five 

 specimens, and as already remarked, a little over half the food of 

 all consisted of animal matter, about one-third being insects, 



