4 OwEN, A Captive Hermit Thrush. pack 
I began, early, to experiment with such food as I thought likely 
would have fallen to the lot of the Thrush had it been left to the 
care of its parents. Thus, July 1, I fed to the bird a number of 
earthworms. For convenience’ sake, I cut a few of the biggest 
worms into two or three pieces, each of which was as large as an 
ordinary worm. Counting these pieces as whole worms, and this 
is legitimate, considering their size, the Thrush ate 19 worms 
between the hours of 8.30 A.M. and r P.M., four hours and a half. 
This is at the rate of 4 worms per hour, or one worm every fifteen 
minutes. These figures, again, do not represent the capacity of 
the bird truthfully because I had not become expert in feeding, 
and after I had made several unsuccessful efforts to thrust the 
wriggling object in my fingers down the bird’s throat, it often 
would shut its mouth in disgust and refuse the worm. 
July 3 came the discovery that the Hermit Thrush is fastidious in 
its diet. At 1.45 on that day, the bird weighed 25.2 grammes. 
At the same hour, I weighed out 7.5 grammes of worms taken 
from a manure heap. In 30 minutes, the bird had eaten four 
grammes of the worms. If it had continued at the same rate, it 
would have eaten its own weight in worms in 3.15 hours; but it 
soon appeared that the bird did not relish the flavor of these 
dunghill delicacies. It made a great splutter in eating the worms 
and frequently rejected them with every symptom of nausea and 
abhorrence, wiping its bill on the nearest object, which was, 
generally, my hand. So I threw away the remainder of this lot of 
worms and renewed the experiment with five grammes of worms 
taken from cool, black, garden mould. These the bird dispatched, 
with evident relish, in just 30 minutes more. At this rate, it 
would have eaten itsown weight of acceptable worms in about two 
hours and a half! My record of later experiments, however, 
indicates that the Thrush would not prove quite so voracious a 
songster. Just how long it would take the young bird to eat its 
own weight in worms, I never accurately ascertained. To know 
this would, indeed, be interesting, but it would be of small scien- 
tific value since the conditions of captivity differ widely from those 
surrounding a bird in the wild state. 
The results of the raw meat and the worm experiments caused 
me to infer a rapid digestion on the part of the young Thrush. It 
