172 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



by poisoning the flesh with its barbed hairs, which are scattered 

 broadcast by the wind. 



GROUSE AND QUAIL. Grouse and quail are largely vegetarian, 

 though the several species have enviable records as successful hunters 

 of insects. The habit of eating the buds of fruit trees in spring is 

 sometimes cited against our ruffed grouse as a serious fault, but 

 usually trees are not harmed by the process. 



The value of all the members of the grouse family, as of waterfowl 

 and waders, for food is great and is constantly increasing as the birds 

 diminish in numbers. Quail have always been favorite objects of 

 pursuit by sportsmen, and by preserving the quail on a large farm, 

 or on a number of adjoining farms, and asking a fair fee from sports- 

 men for the privilege of shooting, a considerable revenue may be 

 derived, and it is not unlikely that the game on a large tract of, say, 

 several hundred acres may be made to yield a revenue as large as that 

 from a good-sized poultry yard, or even larger. However, perhaps 

 the most valuable service to the farmer rendered by bobwhite is the 

 destruction of the seeds of weeds, although the total number of in- 

 sects eaten in a year by a covey on the farm is enormous, and it is 

 questionable if the value of game birds to the farmer, especially the 

 quail, as weed and insect destroyers be not greater than their value as 

 a source of revenue from sportsmen or as food. It is pretty safe to 

 assert that, except where grouse and quail are so numerous that a cer- 

 tain percentge of the increase can be spared, the farmer can not afford 

 to sacrifice them to sport or to the market. (See PL VIII.) 



SPARROW FAMILY. The finch, or sparrow, family is very important 

 to the agriculturist. The group is large, and in North America 

 comprises more than a seventh of all the birds. Most of them are 

 small and plainly colored ; some are gregarious, and most are mi- 

 gratory, leaving the United States in winter. Their chief value to the 

 farmer lies in the fact that the majority of them are indefatigable 

 in their search for seeds of weeds, which indeed constitute a large 

 part of their fare the year round. (See PI. IX.) Practically all of 

 the food of at least one of them the tree sparrow consists of seed. 

 If we estimate that a single tree sparrow eats a quarter of an ounce of 

 weed seed daily and stomach examinations by Professor Beal show 

 that this is a fair estimate this species in a State the size of Iowa 

 consumes more than 800 tons of seed annually. And there are many 

 other sparrows whose appetite for weed seed falls little short of that 

 of the tree sparrow. 



As every farmer knows, the cost of farming is largely augmented 

 by the expense of fighting weeds, the seeds of many of which, espe- 

 cially of certain noxious kinds, are very numerous and are capable 

 of germinating after being long buried in the soil. As weeds have 

 been estimated annually to damage crop land on the average about a 



