THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



215 



proper home in the wild grasses in the 

 swamps, as Fitch has assumed, must 

 also be considered erroneous. The 

 moth prefers matted grass amid which 

 to lay her eggs, and the more tender 

 grasses are those first selected by the 

 worms. Old, neglected fields, whether 

 their location be low or high, are the most 

 natural breeding places for the insect. 

 That the worms most often appear in low 

 lands, or in the neighborhood of such, 

 doubtless finds more correct explanation, 

 first, in the highly probable fact that the 

 parent moth gets more appropriate food at 

 such places, either in saccharine exuda- 

 tions, the natural "sweat " of the plants, or 

 moisture from the ground ; secondly, in 

 the well observed fact that such lands 

 afford the greatest extent of neglected 

 meadows where the insect has opportunity 

 to multiply unnoticed and undisturbed. 



THE FOOD OF THE BLUEBIRD (Sialia sialis, L. 



This beautiful and beloved bird, en- 

 deared to the student of nature by every 

 particular of its plumage, song, and way 

 of life, is also one of the most popular 

 of all birds with farmers and gardeners. 

 Living under the eyes of men from the 

 first yielding days of the later winter until 

 the year grows chill and dark with the re- 

 treat of autumn, it has been praised most 

 warmly for its tireless service of man by 

 those who knew it best. A cursory ob- 

 servation of its feeding habits will strongly 

 support the general impression of its use- 

 fulness. Most frequently it takes a short, 

 quick flight to the ground from a fence- 

 post, or a low branch of a tree, and, after 

 a moment's pause, returns to its perch with 

 a caterpillar, or a grasshopper, or some 

 other insect in its beak, which it devours 

 at its leisure, repeating this operation so 

 frequently that none can doubt its enor- 

 mous destructiveness to insect life. 



It is true that a little reflection will sug- 

 gest that, as it evidently sees its prey before 

 it leaves its perch, it must usually take only 



the most conspicuous and the most active 

 insects, and that there is no security that 

 these will be the most injurious — that they 

 may not be, in fact, among the most bene- 

 ficial ; but this consideration does not 

 seem to have made any impression, and 

 the Bluebird remains to this day substan- 

 tially without reproach. 



It is not a pleasant task to cast the first 

 aspersion upon this gentle little bird, so 

 universally admired; but the injuries of 

 which it must be accused are not of a 

 kind likely to seem very important to the 

 general public, and, at any rate, the truth 

 is better than error, even about a Blue- 

 bird. 



I have now examined carefully, with the 

 microscope, the contents of eighty-six 

 stomachs of this species, of which ten were 

 taken in February, twenty-one in March, 

 thirteen in April, nine in May, ten in June, 

 nine in July, two in September, and twelve 

 in December (in Southern Illinois). I 

 propose to present the data for each of 

 these months; to summarize them for the 

 year; to estimate the benefit and injury in- 

 dicated to farm and garden, and to make 

 a comparison of the food of this bird with 

 that of the robin, and of the thrushes gen- 

 erally. 



FEBRUARY. 



The ten birds of this month were all 

 shot at Normal, 111., from the 24th to the 

 29th of the month, in the present year. 

 These stomachs, with those obtained from 

 Galena, in early March, represent the first 

 food of the season. 



The record opens with a bird shot on 

 the 24th. Thirty per cent, of its food had 

 been grass-eating cut-worms, 40 per cent, 

 crickets {Gryllus abbreviatus), 5 per cent. 

 Ichneumonidce {Arenetra nigrita Cress), and 

 25 per cent, the larvse of the two-lined 

 soldier-beetle ( Telephorus bilitieatus). Now, 

 the Ichneumons are doubtless parasitic, al- 

 though about the habits of the genus 

 Are?tetra, I have at present but little 

 specific information, and the soldier beetles 

 are reported by Prof. Riley and others 

 to be highly useful insects, noted espe- 

 cially for the destruction of the Apple- 



