362 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [June, 
to which they are unknown in the wild state. The experiments of 
Pocock and Butler, resulting in the acceptance of many British 
insects by a variety of foreign mammals and birds, illustrate the same 
point. As noted before, the acceptance of butterflies by some of 
Finn’s birds signifies no more, concerning their natural food habits, 
than does their acceptance of boiled rice. It means no more than 
the eating of silver fish, clothes moths, and mealworms by Mrs. 
Nice’s bobwhites. 
The point need be no further elaborated. We are forced to 
conclude that acceptance of various items of food by captive animals 
is no indication whatever that they are eaten by the same species 
in the wild state. 
(2) Rejections.—This point really follows from analogy the con- 
clusion just cited. There is no logic in regarding rejections as 
indicative of natural tastes, when acceptances are plainly shown not 
to be. But evidence to prove the case is much harder to obtain, 
and it is for this reason that we have been compelled to endure the 
style of argument that asserts “refusal . . . . is trustworthy evidence 
of unpalatability, while acceptance is not proof of palatability.” 
Fortunately, however, we have information regarding the choice 
of food by a number of animals, both in captivity and under natural 
conditions. We have shown that in certain of the experiments with 
amphibia, the animals refused articles of food which they habitually 
eat in the natural state. For instance, this is true of the refusal 
by the common toad of the Eastern United States of millipeds 
(Julus), squash-bugs (Anasa tristis), and potato beetles (Leptino- 
tarsa decemlineata). Prof. Whitman found that ordinary articles 
of the natural diet were refused by captive Necturus. Snakes, in 
particular, often refuse all food in confinement. Is this “trustworthy 
evidence of unpalatability?’’ The writer had the care for a year of 
six prairie rattlesnakes (Sistrurus catenatus). Live mice and birds 
put in their cage were killed, but not eaten. No food was taken 
naturally and they were kept alive only by putting meat well down 
their gullets with long-jawed forceps. 
Beddard found that a green woodpecker made great objection to 
eating a single earwig, yet Newstead found twenty-three of these 
insects in the stomach of a wild bird of this species. Finn found 
that captive red-whiskered bulbuls refused Acrea, but an observer 
in India saw the birds feeding the “most distasteful’ insect of the 
genus to their young. So little is known regarding the natural food 
of birds in most countries that few such comparisons can be made. 
