160 USEFUL BIRDS. 
April to September, Professor Forbes found that seventy-one 
per cent. of their food consisted of insects, twenty per cent. 
of fruit, and a small percentage of mollusks and spiders, 
together with a large portion of myriapods. Mollusks, par- 
ticularly clams, mussels, and snails, are eaten by many birds, 
while the myriapod, or thousand legs, and the ground spiders 
are eaten by most ground-frequenting species. 
The Wood Thrush takes its food from ground, shrubbery, 
and trees in the woods, and even invades the grass land at 
times, where it is said, like the Robin, to take earthworms. It 
eats injurious grasshoppers and crickets, also ground beetles 
and their larve, click beetles, wireworms, and other Coleop- 
tera, both tree-feeding and ground-feeding species. It gleans 
cutworms from lawn and field, and is particularly fond of ants. 
It also does good service in killing some of the most destruc- 
tive caterpillar pests, not neglecting the hairy species, like 
the forest tent caterpillar, and the larve of the gipsy moth 
and the brown-tail moth, as well as most of the hairless spe- 
cies, such as both the fall and spring cankerworms, of which it 
is fond. It also destroys the rose beetle, as Professor Forbes 
found the stomach of one specimen crammed with them. 
This species appedrs to be quite as valuable as the Robin 
in its insectivorous habits; and, as it eats far less fruit than 
the Robin, it must be of great service to man whenever it 
can be induced to nest about his dwellings. Were cats, 
birds’-egging boys, and bird-killing Italians suppressed, this 
bird might become as domestic as the Robin, if not as com- 
mon. The prospect of the transmutation of the substance 
of noxious caterpillars, grubs, and beetles into the glorious 
music of the Song Thrush, should stimulate us to learn how 
to attract it to our homes and domesticate it there for all 
time. 
KINGLETS. 
These pigmy birds are probably among the most useful 
species in woodlands. They are extremely small, ranking 
next in size to Hummingbirds, and therefore feed to a con- 
siderable extent on minute forest insects so small as to escape 
most other birds. They are peculiarly fitted to care for the 
trees, for they are able not only to creep about the trunks 
