PO OTHKR ANIM 2 ^) 



lish, and t lie slmvt-l ii>h, BCVent) -nt of the ' itfhty-seven which 



I have studied. 



\mon.u tin- above, I found them tin- mo>t important food of the 

 white ba, the toot hed herring, t he -hovel fish (fifty-One p , and 



the croppies; while they made a fourth or more of the aliment .1 ry con- 

 tent- of the sheepshead (forty M'\ per tent. , the darter-, the pirate 

 perch, the common sunfishes (I.cpomis and ( '/i(cnol>ryltu\ < , the roek 

 the little pic kerel, and the common sin ker (thirty -i\ per 



cent.). 



" Kphemerid larva.' were eaten by two hundred ami thirteen speci- 

 mens of forty-eight species not counting young. The larva of Hexa- 

 f/r/m/, one of the commonest of the 'river flies/ was by far the most 

 important insect of this group, this alone amounting to about half of 

 all the Neuroptera eaten. It made nearly one half of the food of the 

 shovel fish, more than one tenth that of the sunfishes, and the princi- 

 pal food resource of half-grown sheepshead; but was rarely taken by 

 the sucker family, and made only five per cent, of the food of the catfish 

 group. 



" The various larvae of the dragon flies, on the other hand, were much 

 less frequently encountered. They seemed to be most abundant in 

 the food of the grass pickerel (twenty-five per cent.) and next to that, 

 in the croppie, the pirate perch, and the common perch (ten to thirteen 

 percent.). 



"Case-worms (Phryganeidae) were somewhat rarely found, rising to 

 fifteen per cent, in the rock bass and twelve per cent, in the minnows of 

 the Hybopsis group, but otherwise averaging from one to six per cent, 

 in less than half of the species." 



Insects in Relation to Birds. From an economic point of view the 

 relations between birds and insects are extremely important, and from 

 a purely scientific standpoint they are no less important, involving as 

 they do biological interactions of remarkable complexity. 



The prevalent popular opinion that birds in general are of inesti- 

 mable value as destroyers of noxious insects is a correct one, as Dr. 

 Forbes proved, from his precise and extensive studies upon the food of 

 Illinois birds, involving a laborious and difficult examination of the 

 stomach contents of many hundred specimens. All that follows is 

 taken from Forbes, when no other author's name is mentioned, and 

 though the percentages given by him apply to particular years and would 

 undoubtedly vary more or less from year to year, they are here for con- 

 venience regarded as representative of any year and are spoken of in 



