BIRDS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 295 
of seed, fruit, and insects. The native Sparrows destroy 
very little grain, great quantities of weed seeds and insects, 
and hardly any cultivated fruit; they are, therefore, almost 
entirely harmless. They frequent grass fields, cultivated 
fields, and gardens, and in some cases orchards ; thus their 
good work is done where it is of great benefit to the farmer. 
Dr. Judd tells us that the food of Sparrows consists of 
from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. animal matter, and 
from sixty-five to seventy-five per cent. vegetable matter ; 
this is exclusive of the mineral matter, which is mostly 
swallowed as an aid to digestion. Beneficial insects sel- 
dom amount to more than two per cent. of the food; this 
is a very low average. The Flycatchers and Swallows take a 
very much larger per cent. of useful insects. Sparrows may 
do some slight harm in distributing the seeds of weeds ; but, 
as their stomachs grind the food most thoroughly, it is proba- 
ble that very few seeds pass through the alimentary canal in 
a condition to germinate. 
On the other side of the account we find that insect pests 
make up from ten to twenty per cent. of the year’s food; 
these are mainly grasshoppers and cutworms, army worms 
and their allies, and beetles, such as click beetles and weevils. 
Bugs are eaten in small quantities. While nearly all the 
native Sparrows eat Geometrid caterpillars, like the canker- 
worms, only a few have been known to eat the hairy species. 
Such weevils as injure clover and strawberries are destroyed 
in large numbers; also some flea beetles and leaf-eating 
beetles are eaten. 
The young of Sparrows are almost entirely insectivorous 
until they leave the nest ; and, as many of these birds usually 
rear at least two broods in a season, they do great good in 
the gardens and fields while rearing their young. 
‘When the good work of destroying insect pests is practi- 
cally over for the season, the Sparrows turn at once to the 
ripening seeds of weeds. The number of such seeds that a 
single bird will eat in a day has never been ascertained ; but 
a Tree Sparrow was found to have in its stomach seven hun- 
dred seeds of pigeon grass, and a Snowflake had taken at 
one meal a thousand seeds of pigweed. The Japanese mil- 
