50 USEFUL BIRDS. 
stomach. I am not aware that this has ever been done, but 
have no doubt that the majority of the farmers of Massachu- 
setts would not object to the destruction of a considerable 
number of young Crows for this purpose, or any other. 
The Crow which was accidentally killed had fed freely 
upon grasshoppers for twenty minutes, and died ten minutes 
after the close of the feeding period. An examination of 
the alimentary canal showed the stomach to be quite full, 
but less than fifty per cent. of its contents, consisting mainly 
of the hard parts of wings, thoraces, and legs, was in a con- 
dition to be recognized. The strongly chitinized pronota 
and hind femora of the grasshoppers offered the most resist- 
ance to the digestive processes. The other fifty per cent. 
of the stomach contents had been so finely divided, in the 
very brief time that it had been in that receptacle, that one 
would hardly have cared to express a positive opinion as 
to its identity. This condition of stomach contents is not 
unusual. In examining the contents of birds’ stomachs we 
often find more than fifty per cent. of the food so finely 
comminuted and mixed as to be practically unrecognizable. 
The presence of insects in a bird’s stomach is sometimes made 
known by a mere mandible or some other recognizable por- 
tion, which has resisted for a time the grinding of this remark- 
able digestive organ. It is significant, however, that, in the 
thirty minutes intervening between the beginning of a feeding 
period and death, the stomach had thoroughly pulverized 
half the food eaten. 
This experiment was carried further with the second Crow. 
On September 14 the only food materials given the bird were 
six crickets and eleven grasshoppers. These it ate within 
four minutes, and thirty minutes later it was killed. 
Only about twenty-five per cent. of the stomach contents 
was recognizable, but this is not all. The alimentary canal 
was thirty-six inches in length, and in the intestine at a 
distance of from twelve to fifteen inches from the stomach, 
and again at twenty-five to twenty-eight inches from that, 
organ, were found a few small pieces of the fore wings of the 
grasshoppers. As the bird had not been fed since 4 o’clock 
in the afternoon of the previous day, these remains probably 
