BIRDS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 285 
ordinary food of the bird in that region. In the\one case 
much fruit and few insects were found in the birds’ stom- 
achs; in the other case the birds’ stomachs were filled with 
the caterpillars of the American silkworm which Mr. Trou- 
velot was breeding, and contained no fruit, although wild 
berries were plentiful all about. The Robin might be a pest 
in Ohio and a blessing in Massachusetts. It is a great fruit 
eater, but it takes none of man’s products except fruit, and 
in Massachusetts small fruits alone suffer materially from its 
attacks. 
Professor Beal, who probably has examined more stomachs 
of Robins from different regions than any other investigator, 
states that vegetable food formed nearly fifty-eight per cent. 
of the contents of three hundred and thirty stomachs ; forty- 
seven per cent. of the vegetable matter consisted of wild 
fruits, and only a little more than four per cent. of varieties 
that were possibly cultivated. This seems to sustain the 
contention that, where wild fruit is plentiful, as it is in many 
parts of the country, it is preferred by the Robin to culti- 
vated fruit. The greatest quantity of cultivated fruit is 
eaten in late June and in early July, when early cherries 
and strawberries ripen, and before there is much ripe wild 
fruit. Thus in Illinois Professor Forbes found that in June 
fifty-five per cent. of the food of the Robin consisted of 
cherries and raspberries, and fourteen birds that he exam- 
ined, killed in July, had revelled in the fruit garden. Rasp- 
berries, blackberries, and currants formed seventy-nine per 
cent. of their food. Cherries made forty-four parts of the 
food eaten in August by fourteen birds, but two-thirds of 
these cherries were wild. 
Where early wild fruits are plentiful the Robins do far 
less injury to cultivated fruits. A list of the wild fruits eaten 
by birds is given in another chapter. The Robin eats nearly 
all of them; therefore it is unnecessary here to speak fur- 
ther of the vegetable food of this bird, except to mention 
a few of its favorite fruits. Among these are: wild cher- 
ries, wild grapes of several species, the berries of the sour 
gum or tupelo, smilax, greenbrier, holly, all species of 
sumac, poison ivy, elder, huckleberries, blueberries, black- 
