BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES 241 



Imperial Department of Agriculture for India, con- 

 ducted a careful enquiry into the food of birds. The 

 enquiry was made at Pusa in Bengal, in the years 

 1907, 1908, 1909. The results arrived at by Mr. Mason 

 are published in the Memoirs of the Department of 

 Agriculture for India (Entomological Series, Vol. Ill, 

 January, 1912). As the result of this enquiry, in 

 the course of which the contents of the stomachs of 

 hundreds of Indian birds were examined, Mr. Mason 

 writes (page 338, loc. cit.) : " Butterflies do not form any 

 appreciable proportion of the food of any one species 

 of bird, though a good many birds take these insects 

 at times. . . . 



" The butterflies include a number of minor pests, 

 of which Melanitis ismene was taken by Merops 

 viridis and Papilio pammon bj' Acridotheres tristis. 

 Other well-known pests are Pieris brassicae, Virachola 

 isocrates and Papilio demoleus. Belenois mesentina, 

 a Pierid, was seen to be taken on one occasion by 

 the king-crow, and Ilerda sena by Passer domesticus, 

 both of which insects are neutral. 



" Moths include many major pests of varied habits 

 — defoliators, miners, cut-worms, grain and fabric 

 pests. The larvae form an inexhaustible supply of 

 insect food to almost all species of insectivorous 

 birds, and even many species of birds that when 

 mature feed almost, if not quite, entirely on grain 

 and seeds are when in the nest fed very largely on 

 caterpillars by the parent birds." 



Obviously, then, in India birds comparatively 

 rarely attack butterflies ; but they devour millions 



