286 Recent Literatim [April 



meats lived on the average only about 34 hours after capture. "Approxi- 

 mately 356 P. dispar eggs were fed to the last three sparrows. One hun- 

 dred and forty-two of these eggs or 40 per cent, were found intact in the 

 excrement. Seven of the 356 (2 per cent) or 5 per cent of the 142 that were 

 passed intact hatched. One hundred and thirty-five or 38 per cent was the 

 approximate number found to be digested or partly so." The excrement 

 of the pigeon contained no intact eggs. 



The writer admits that the ' ' experiments were conducted under abnormal 

 conditions. The birds were not only forced to swallow the food, but were 

 deprived of their freedom, which is essential to rapid and vigorous diges- 

 tion." We would add that it would have been much better to have selected 

 for experiment birds such as Chickadees that arc known habitually to feed 

 upon lepidopterous eggs. Observations on these birds in a room}- cage 

 and with choice of a variety of food, including gipsy moth eggs, might 

 furnish some data having a bearing on the natural distribution ot the eggs. 



But experiments upon an owl and such preeminently granivorous spe- 

 cies as the fringilline birds and pigeons, especially when these birds are very 

 closely confined and have their few last mouthfuls of food, in which gipsy 

 moth eggs are concealed, forced upon them, depart too far from natural 

 conditions. So abnormal were both sets of experiments that it is doubtful 

 if the results shed any light on the distribution of gipsy moth eggs by 

 genuine egg-eating birds in the state of nature. 



One other entomological paper to which we wish to draw attention also 

 deals with insect eggs. This is Mr. Henry H. P. Severin's 'Study on the 

 Structure of the Egg of the Walking-Stick Diapheromera femorata Say, and 

 the Biological Significance of the Resemblance of Phasmid Eggs to Seeds." 1 

 The writer says: "Sharp in all the species which he has examined believes 

 that these resemblances in the eggs have no bionomic importance for the 

 species and I am strongly inclined to accept his view in the case of the egg 

 of Diapheromera femorata." This statement is very welcome to economic 

 ornithologists, who have suffered long, though chiefly in silence, from the 

 deluge of theoretical essays on the supposed relations of birds to mimicry 

 and kindred phenomena among insects. 



Mr. E. G. Titus is the author of an interesting bulletin of the Utah 

 Experiment Station 2 dealing with the alfalfa leaf-weevil (Pkytonomus 

 mi<n'n us), a pest of foreign origin recently introduced and doing immense 

 damage in the State. Some attention was paid to natural enemies, and 

 it is said that "wild birds do not appear to relish the weevil, or perhaps 

 they have not become accustomed to its presence." Twenty out of 80 

 English Sparrows shot in alfalfa fields had eaten the weevil. One Black- 

 headed Grosbeak was collected and found to have eaten the weevil. These 

 results do not warrant the statement made in this Bulletin and elsewhere 

 that "wild birds do not appear to relish the weevil," for really only one bird 



i Ann. Ent. Soc. Am., Ill, 1910, pp. 83-92. 

 2 Bull. 110, 1910, pp. 19-72. 



