HOUSE FINCH. 21 
by which the California fruit grower may protect his orchards from 
the attack of the linnet—namely, by planting around orchards shrubs 
and trees the fruit of which will serve to attract birds away from 
the marketable kinds. There are many fruit-bearing shrubs and 
trees whose products, while worthless to man, are likely to prove more 
attractive to linnets than are the orchard fruits. That linnets will 
eat wild fruit appears from the fact that elderberries (Sambucus) 
were found in 49 stomachs, and their apparent partiality for culti- 
vated fruits is readily explained by the fact that usually they are 
the only kinds obtainable. 
FOOD OF YOUNG LINNETS. 
Of the 1,206 stomachs of linnets included in this investigation, 46 
were those of young birds taken from the nest, The young vary in 
age from birds 2 days old to those nearly ready to flv. In order to 
ascertain the exact difference, if any, between the food of the nes- 
tlings and that of the adults, the contents of these 46 stomachs were 
tabulated by themselves and the percentages of the various items of 
food calculated. The results show 2.4 percent of animal food to 
97.6 of vegetable. The animal food consists mostly of the larve of 
a minute beetle which lives on decayed fruit, with a few plant-lice 
and one small fragment of a grasshopper, the only one found in any 
of the stomachs. The vegetable food consists entirely of weed seed, 
the most important of which are the following: Sunflower, bur weed, 
milk thistle, and poison oak. (See Pl. I, figs. 6, 8, 9.) 
No fact connected with the food habits of the linnet is more sur- 
prising than this. The great body of the fringilline birds, though 
subsisting largely and in most cases almost entirely upon vegetable 
food in adult life, feed their young in the early stage of existence 
almost exclusively upon insects or other animal food, and begin to 
give them vegetable food only when nearly ready to leave the nest. 
It is doubtful if there is an exception to this rule so pronounced as the 
linnet. As calculated, the nestlings ate actually less animal food than 
their parents, but the difference is so small that it may be accidental. 
ECONOMIC PLACE OF THE LINNET. 
Admitting, as we must, that the orchardist has just grounds of 
complaint against the linnet on account of depredations upon fruit, 
the bird’s claim to favorable consideration must rest upon its valuable 
services as a consumer of weed seed and upon its esthetic value. It 
is trim and pretty, has a sweet song, and in many ways is a pleasing 
adjunct of rural life—in fact, many Californians believe that the 
limet, in spite of its sins of commission and omission, should be 
