THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 205 
“Scarcely anything comes amiss to the ravenous hosts 
when famished. ‘They will feed upon the dry bark of trees 
or the dry lint of seasoned fence-planks, and upon dry leaves, 
paper, cotton and woollen fabrics. They have been seen 
literally covering the backs of sheep, eating the wool; and 
whenever one of their own kind is weak or disabled, from 
cause whatsoever, they go for him or her with cannibalistic 
ferocity, and soon finish the struggling and kicking unfortu- 
nate. They do not refuse even dead animals, but have been 
seen feasting on dead bats and birds. Few things, therefore, 
come amiss to them; yet where food is abundant they are 
fastidious, and much prefer acid, bitter or peppery, food, to 
that which is sweet. The following resumé of my notes and 
observations may prove interesting :—‘ Vegetables and cereals 
are their main-stay; turnips, rutabagas, carrots, cabbage, 
kohlrabi, and radishes, are all devoured with avidity; 
beets and potatoes with less relish, though frequently nothing 
but a few stalk-stubs of the latter are left, and sometimes the 
tubers in the ground do not escape; onions they are very 
partial to, seldom leaving anything but the outer rind; of 
leguminous plants the pods are preferred to the leaves, which 
are often passed by; cucurbitaceous plants also suffer most 
in the fruit; in the matter of tobacco their tastes are culti- 
vated, and they seem to relish an old quid or an old cigar 
more than the green leaf; tomatoes and sweet potatoes are 
not touched, so long as other food is to mouth. Of cereals, 
corn is their favourite; if young and tender, everything is 
devoured to the ground; if older and dryer, the stalks are 
mostly left; the silk is, however, the first part to go. All 
other cereals are to their taste, except sorghum and broom- 
corn, which are often left untouched. They are fond of 
buckwheat and flax, but seldom touch castor-beans. Next 
to vegetables and cereals they relish the leaves of fruit-trees: 
they strip apple and sweet cherry-trees, leaving nothing but 
the fruit hanging on the bare twigs. The leaves of the peach 
are generally left untouched, but the flesh of the unripe fruit 
is eaten to the stone. Pear-trees, as Mr. Gale informs me, 
suffered less than any other kind of orchard-tree at the 
Experimental Farm at Manhattan, Kansas. The tender bark 
of twig and branch and trunk of all these trees is gnawed and 
girdled; and these girdled trees present a sad picture as oue 
