216 
apparent in our records of the crow-blackbird, found especially abundant 
in swamps, corn fields, orchards, and yards and gardens, of the cowbird 
in wheat and yards and gardens, the mourning dove in wheat and 
orchards, the flicker in meadow, pasture, and woods, and the upland 
plover in meadow. and plowed land. This seems, in most cases at least, 
mainly a matter of the relations of feeding and breeding places, identical 
for some birds and for others more or less separate and unlike. 
If we may assume that the present meadows and woodlands most 
nearly resemble the primitive prairie and forest as homes and haunts 
of birds, we see that in bringing the last two under cultivation we have 
greatly diminished the areas most desirable to birds, and must have 
reduced the total number of birds accordingly except as these unfavor- 
able effects may have been compensated by more favorable conditions 
established at other points. 
Such compensation appears in the substitution of pastures for 
prairie, as may be seen by a comparison of a total of 1004 birds per 
square mile of pasture with that of 856 for meadow; and in the sub- 
stitution of orchard for forest, the numbers of which per square mile 
(English sparrow excluded) are 1987 and 1425 respectively—gains of 
17 per cent. in the first case and nearly 39 per cent. in the second. 
By a more detailed comparison of our tabulated data, one habitat 
column with another, we may get more precise ideas of the apparent 
affiliation of habitats as related to birds. These affiliations may be 
inferred from an examination of the following table, made by dropping 
from each column of the preceding general table the numbers per square 
mile which are smaller than the general average for the habitat, those 
remaining showing the species which are equal to or greater than the 
habitat average for all the species. 
It will be readily seen that this table is divisible vertically into 
three more or less definite areas or bands, made up respectively of 
(1) meadows, pastures, swamps, and waste and fallow lands, the nearest 
approach remaining to us of the primitive prairies of the state; (2) 
fields of cereal crops together with plowed and stubble fields which 
have lately borne them; and (3) areas of forest, orchard, and shrubbery 
to which the exceptionally and radically new habitat of yards and 
gardens may be appended as more nearly related here than anywhere 
else.* For convenience’ sake these may be distinguished as pasture- 
meadow, cereal-crop, and tree-shrub associations; and the numbers of 
birds per square mile of each were as follows: cereal-crop, 602, pasture- 
meadow, 923, and tree-shrub, 3111, related to each other respectively as. 
1, 1.65, and 5.17. 
By a more detailed comparison of our tabulated data, one habitat 
column with another, we may get more precise ideas of the apparent 
affiliation of habitats as related to birds. The cereal-crop area is evidently 
*For more significant tures of this relationship, see the detailed general 
table on ¢hewepposite page. yd 
