EVIDENCE — FROM EUROPEAN PUBLICATIONS. 345 



August.— Customary food: Wheat, barley, oats. Occasional food: Seeds of corn, 

 bind- weed, knot-grass, etc. (see list, page 343) ; aphides, small beetles, daddy-long-legs 

 (Tipula), caterpillars of Teras contaminana, moth of Crambus culmellus* (E. F. Becher 

 and F. Norgate). 



September.— Customary food : Corn ; seeds of many kinds, especially the kuot-grass 

 and corn bind-weed. Occasional food : Caterpillars; berries; seeds of plantain (T. 

 Southwell). 



October.— Customary food : Grain, some of it refuse grain ; seeds of many kinds, in- 

 cluding knot-grass. 



November.— Customary food : Grain ; seeds of plants. Occasional food : Newly-sown 

 seeds of wheat ; small caterpillars. 



December.— Customary food: Grain, principally obtained from stacks. Occasional 

 food: Seeds; maize; sprouting bean (H. H. Slater). 



Food of young Sjparroivs to the Time of leaving the Nest. 



May. —Customary food: Grains of last year's corn; small beetles ; caterpillars. 

 Occasional food: Buds (F. Norgate); red spider (J. H. G.) ; hair-worms (J. H. G.); 

 small flies (J. H. G.). 



June. — Customary food : Caterpillars of various kinds up to three-quarters of an 

 inch in length; young wheat. Occasional food: Beetles; large, brown cabbage- 

 moth (W. Johns) ; wire worms. 



July. — Customary food: Caterpillars; beetles; soft, milky grains of wheat and 

 barley. Occasional food : Blue-bottle flies (J. Duff). 



August. — Customary food: Caterpillars; beetles; young corn. Occasional food: 



Small chrysalides. 



Summary. 



To give a summary of this table in a few words, it may be said that about seventy- 

 five per cent, of an adult Sparrow's food during its life is corn of some kind. The 

 remaining twenty-five per cent, may be roughly divided as follows : 



Per cent. 



Seeds of weeds 10 



Green peas 4 



Beetles 3 



Caterpillars 2 



Insects which fly 1 



Other things 5 



In young Sparrows not more than forty per cent, is corn, while about forty per cent, 

 consists of caterpillars, and ten per cent, of small beetles. This is up to the age of 

 sixteen days. Where green peas abound, as in market gardens, they form a much 

 larger proportion of the Sparrow's food than the four per cent, here stated. 



Sparrows generally contain in their gizzards a considerable quantity of small stones, 

 gravel, sand, brick, coal, etc., but these are only intended to grind the real food. In 

 default of these substances they will swallow small mollusks, fragments of egg-shell, 

 fragments of snail shells, etc. 



Sparrows should be killed for dissection in the afternoon. In adult Sparrows the 

 crop will generally give a far better idea of their day's meal than the gizzard, in 

 which the food is so comminuted as to be with difficulty identified. If the Sparrows 

 are caught at night they have digested their food in a great measure, and yield much 

 less satisfactory results ; the crops at that time are always empty. 



* I have notes of Sparrows occasionally feeding on the yellow underwing, ermine 

 moth, and a few other insects in the perfect state, but the date at which the observa- 

 tion was made not having been taken down, it can only be approximately guessed at 

 from the time at which they usually appear. Everybody must at some time or 

 another have observed their clumsy efforts to catch some common butterfly. 



