40 FOOD, HABITS OF THE GROSBEAKS. 
are of little economic value. Moreover, it is noticeable that the fruit- 
producing or pistillate flowers are not the ones preferred, but the 
sterile staminate ones. These are produced in countless millions, and 
wither and fall away after a short season. All of the plants named 
above, whose seeds are even occasionally utilized by man, such as 
the hickories, walnuts, beech, and oaks, have the staminate and pis- 
tillate flowers separate, while no use is made of the seeds of the maple 
and elm, which have both sexes present in a single flower. 
Buds were found in but 2 stomachs, those in one being identified as 
poplar, and remains of tender young shoots of some woody plant were 
eaten by another grosbeak. These results indicate a much slighter 
preference for buds than the bird is usually credited with. But even 
admitting that the bird relishes buds, it is difficult to conceive how 
forest and shade trees, numerous as they are, can possibly be injured, 
since the rosebreast never gathers in Jarge flocks during the budding 
season. With fruit trees the case is different, for an isolated tree in a 
home garden may receive the attentions of several birds at the same 
time. But even then the chance of injury is slight, and in the major- 
ity of cases the tree, as stated above, receives no more than a bene- 
ficial pruning. 
CULTIVATED FRUIT, 
The rosebreast is said to feed occasionally on cultivated fruits, but 
no complaints of serious injury by the bird have been received. Most 
observers state that they lose but little fruit by grosbeaks, and this 
is considered only partial payment for services rendered. One cor- 
respondent, after mentioning the fact that the birds eat the potato 
beetle, says: 
Tuey also feed on my bervies. Still I plant enough for all, and put up with 
the loss for the sake of their good qualities. 
The rosebreast is reported to attack cherries, currants, and other 
berries. During the examination of stomachs, however, cultivated 
fruit was found to have been eaten by only 1 grosbeak. This bird and 
a companion were collected in a cherry tree in Massachusetts, where 
they were suspected of pilfering the fruit. One had eaten perhaps a 
single mouthful of cherry, which constituted 18 percent of its 
stomach contents, and had eaten also some weevils, stink bugs, and 
a potato beetle, all highly injurious insects. Several other grosbeaks 
of the present collection were killed because they were thought to be 
eating fruit, but their stomachs yielded no trace of it. 
WILD FRUIT. 
While cultivated fruit is a negligible item of the rosebreasted 
grosbeak’s bill of fare, wild fruit, on the contrary, is the most im- 
portant single article, constituting 19.3 percent, or almost a fifth of 
