166 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



The record of the food of the meadow-lark is unusually 

 full and complete. The stomach contents of ninety-three 

 specimens from seven widely separated States (New York, 

 Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin, 

 and Nebraska), taken during March, April, May, June, July, 

 August, October, and November, have been examined by 

 competent investigators ; the results prove beyond all doubt 

 that this is a bird of extraordinary economic value. Thirty- 

 three specimens from various parts of Illinois, taken during 

 March, April, May, June, and July, were studied by Forbes, 

 who found that three-fourths of the food consisted of insects, 

 the peculiar animals known as "thousand-legs" and grains 

 of corn and wheat constituting the remainder. Caterpillars 

 formed twenty-eight per cent, of the food, one-half of them 

 being cutworms and army-worms and one-fourth the hairy 

 larvae of the family of "tiger-moths." Even during these 

 early months grasshoppers formed thirteen per cent, of the 

 stomach contents, and beetles of various kinds twenty per 

 cent., one-fourth of them being ground-beetles and the others 

 including June-beetles, blister-beetles, curculios, click-beetles, 

 and plant-beetles. One bird had eaten twenty chinch-bugs, 

 and others had eaten various soldier-bugs. Crane-flies had 

 been occasionally devoured. "Considering these data with 

 reference to the interest of the farm and garden," writes 

 Professor Forbes, " we must admit the probable eminent 

 usefulness of this bird. Its great destruction of grasshoppers 

 and of cutworms and other caterpillars, and the absence of 

 all depredations other than the appropriation of scattered 

 grains of corn (often picked, no doubt, from the droppings of 

 stock), taken in connection with the fact that it eats only the 

 normal average of predaceous insects, are all strong indica- 

 tions of valuable service rendered, with unusually few draw- 

 backs. It supervises our grass-lands much more closely than 

 the bluebird or the robin, and should be carefully protected 

 from the shotgun and birds-nesting school-boy." 



