38 
Vegetable food forms nearly 58 per cent of the stomach contents, over 
47 being wild fruits, and only a little more than 4 per cent being possibly 
cultivated varieties. Cultivated fruit amounting to about 25 per cent 
was found in the stomachs in June and July, but only a trifle in August. 
Wild fruit, on the contrary, is eaten in every month, and constitutes a 
staple food during half the year. No less than forty-one species were 
identified in the stomachs; of these, the most important were four spe- 
cies of dogwood, three of wild cherries, three of wild grapes, four of 
greenbrier, two of holly, two of elder; and cranberries, huckleberries, 
blueberries, barberries, service berries, hackberries, and persimmons, 
with four species of sumac, and various other seeds not strictly fruit. 
The depredations of the robin seem to be confined to the smaller and 
earlier fruits, and few, if any, complaints have been made against it 
on the score of eating apples, peaches, pears, grapes, or even late 
cherries. By the time these are ripe the forests and hedges are 
teeming with wild fruits, which the bird evidently finds more to its 
taste. The cherry, unfortunately, ripens so early that it is almost the 
only fruit accessible at a time when the bird’s appetite has been sharp- 
ened by a long-continued diet of insects, earthworms, and dried berries, 
and it is no wonder that at first the rich juicy morsels are greedily 
eaten. In view of the fact that the robin takes ten times as much wild 
as cultivated fruit, it seems unwise to destroy the birds to save so 
little. Nor is this necessary, for by a little care both may be preserved. 
Where much fruit is grown, it is no great loss to give up one tree to the 
birds; and in some cases the crop can be protected by scarecrows. 
Where wild fruit is not abundant, a few fruit-bearing shrubs and vines 
judiciously planted will serve for ornament and provide food for the 
birds. The Russian mulberry is a vigorous grower and a profuse 
bearer, ripening at the same time as the cherry, and, so far as observa 
tion has gone, most birds seem to prefer its fruit to any other. It is 
believed that a number of these trees planted around the garden or 
srchard would fully protect the more valuable fruits. 
Many persons have written about the delicate discrimination of birds 
for choice fruit, asserting that only the finest and costliest varieties are 
selected. This is contrary to all careful scientific observation. Birds, 
unlike human beings, seem to prefer fruit like the mulberry, that is 
sweetly insipid, or that has some astringent or bitter quality like the 
chokecherry or holly. The so-called black alder (Ilex verticillata), 
which is a species of holly, has bright scarlet berries, as bitter as 
quinine, that ripen late in October, and remain on the bushes through 
November, and though frost grapes, the fruit of the Virginia creeper, 
and several species of dogwood are abundant at the same time, the 
birds eat the berries of the holly to a considerable extent, as shown by 
the seeds found in the stomachs. It is moreover a remarkable fact 
that the wild fruits upon which the birds feed largely are those which 
man neither gathers for his own use nor adopts for cultivation. 
