^°1«?^'^] Recent Literature. 



421 



animal food, and among these beetles strong scented Carabidae were 

 found oftener than any others." Here is certainly ' food for reflection ! ' 



Mr. Judd, in this excellent paper, not only treats of the food of the 

 Catbird, but gives an exposition of the methods employed in his investiga- 

 tions, where observations on the habits of the wild birds in the field are 

 supplemented by experimentation with captive birds as to their food 

 preferences, and by stomach examinations to ascertain what wild birds 

 have actually eaten. The results of Mr. Judd's investigations are highly 

 favorable to the much maligned Catbird. While it has a partiality for 

 fruits, experiment shows that it prefers mulberries to strawberries and 

 cherries, and that these latter were never touched when mulberries were 

 at hand. Also that the Catbird prefers red mulberries to white mulberries. 

 It is further inferred that cherries and strawberries can be protected from 

 the depredations of the Catbird by planting mulberries. 



Mr. F. E. L. Beal writes of ' The Blue Jay and its Food,' ' and states that 

 " the examination of nearly 300 stomachs shows that the Blue Jay certainly 

 does far more good than harm." It destroys " some grasshoppers and 

 caterpillars and many noxious beetles," and " gathers its fruits from 

 nature's orchard and vineyard, not from man's ; corn is the only vegetable 

 food for which the farmer suffers any loss, and here the damage is small.'' 

 Mr. Beal's examinations of the Blue Jay's stomachs leads him to an 

 optimistic view of his nest-robbing proclivities, which do not sustain 

 " the accusations of eating eggs and young birds." The charges have no 

 doubt been exaggerated, for no reasonable observer would assert that 

 "eggs and young birds constitute the chief food of the Blue Jay during 

 the breeding season." It is not perhaps strange that only a few of the 

 birds examined were taken ' red-handed.' 



Mr. Beal is also author of ' Some Common Birds in Their Relation to 

 Agriculture,' issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture as ' Farmer's 

 Bulletin No. 54 (pp.40, May, 1897"), which " contains brief abstracts of 

 the results of food studies of about thirty grain and insect-eating birds, 

 belonging to 10 different families." These are the Cuckoos, Woodpeckers, 

 Kingbird, Phoebe, Blue Jay, Crow, Bobolink, Red-winged Blackbird, 

 Meadowlark, Baltimore Oriole, Crow Blackbird, Sparrows, Rose-breasted 

 Grosbeak, Swallows, Cedarbird, Catbird, Brown Thrasher, House Wren, 

 Robin, and Bluebird. Many of these abstracts are based on reports 

 previously published by the United States Department of Agriculture in 

 special 'Bulletins' or in its 'Yearbooks,' but others appear to be advance 

 statements of results reached in investigations, the details of which have 

 not yet been published. About a page of text is given to each species, 

 which suffices for a clear summary of its status in relation to agriculture, 

 based on scientific investigation of its food habits under the direction of 

 the chief of the Biological Survey of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 



' Yearbook of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for 1896 {1897), pp. 197- 

 206. 



