Bob-White 257 
fact that in the South a covey has been seen, year after year, in a favorite 
locality for more than a quarter of a century. There they increase so fast 
that they are able to maintain themselves for years, in spite of their numerous 
enemies; but in the North they succumb to the rigors of severe winters. 
Bob-white feeds almost entirely on the ground, except when driven by 
deep snows to seek berries and seeds from the shrubbery. Feeding by prefer- 
ence in the open, the birds usually keep within a short distance of the cover 
afforded by thickets, swamps or rank grain. They usually sleep in the open, 
where flight in all directions is unobstructed. 
; Probably something like 400,000 sportsmen now go out 
Bgenomic from the cities of this country each year to hunt Bob-white. 
This bird has a cash value to the farmer and land-owner, 
for he can demand and obtain from the sportsman a fair price for the birds 
killed on his property. The annual Quail crop, if judiciously handled, is worth 
millions of dollars to the farmers of this country. In many cases, shooting 
rentals more than pay the taxes of the farm, without detracting in any way 
from its value for agricultural purposes. Bob-white pays the greatest part 
of the tax in many school districts, thus paying for the education of the chil- 
dren. Many thousands of dollars are spent in many states in leasing land and 
in holding field trials of dogs. In these trials no shooting is done, the dogs 
merely pointing the birds. 
On the farm, Bob-white comes into closer contact with the crops, year after 
year, than any other bird, yet rarely appreciably injures any grain or fruit. 
Through the investigations of the Bureau of Biological Survey, of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, it is now well known that Bob-white 
ranks very high as a destroyer of many of the most destructive insect pests. 
Among those eaten are potato beetles, cucumber beetles, wire worms, weevils, 
including the Mexican cotton-boll weevil, locusts, grasshoppers, chinch bugs, 
squash bugs and caterpillars. Many of these insects are destroyed by scores 
and hundreds. Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, gives the 
following as eaten by captive birds. Each number given represents the insects 
eaten during a single meal by one bird: Chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12; 
plant-lice, 2,326; grasshoppers, 39; cutworms, 12; army worms, 12; mosquitos, 
568; potato beetles, ror; white grubs, 8. 
The following records are taken from a list which she gives to show the 
number of insects eaten by Bob-white in a day: Chrysanthemum black-flies, 
5,000; flies, 1,350; rose-slugs, 1,286; miscellaneous insects, 700, of which 300 
were grasshoppers; and insects, 1,532, of which 1,000 were grasshoppers. Mrs. 
Nice gives a list of 141 species of insects eaten by the Quail, nearly all of which 
are injurious, and Dr. C. F. Hodge remarks that a bird which eats so many 
injurious insects is welcome to the beneficial ones as well; for, apparently, 
if we could have enough Bob-whites, they would leave nothing for the useful 
insects to do. 
