39 ^ 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. II, 1905. 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAR— VIII. 
(Concluded from page S90.) 
of hilarity on hand. He was_a man of fifty or sixt^ 
tall, gaunt, tanned like an Indian and looking as tough 
as a sundried rawhide. 
“Hooray fer old Kaintucky!” he exclaimed as he 
came out. . j 1 
We sat quietly and looked at him, Enochs and Hick 
from the wagon seat and I from .the saddle. We said 
nothing. , 
“Hello, fellers; hooray fer Old Kam ryhar d yer 
git the b’ar, fellers?” . 
We maintained our silence, meeting his eyes as he 
glanced from one to another of us, with expressionless 
gravity. His glances fell and he began to Iqok a little 
uncertain; then he assumed some more hilarity and 
exclaimed: 
“Hoorav fer Old Kaintucky! I’ve got a dog hyar 
thet ken 'lick ary b’ar in these mountains. Turn yer 
b’ar loose. Hooray fer ” _ ^ , u a 
I had estimated the capacity of his dogs and had 
quietly signaled Dick to unfasten Jack s collar, which 
he had done without hesitation. None of us had said 
anything. , ,,, , 1 
“Ef thet dog kain’t lick thet cub, we ll hev raw dog 
fer supper. Ef he do lick him, we 11 hev .-b ar. Turn 
’im loose, fellers — hooray fer Old Kaintucky ! 
As I observed Jack clambering out of the wagon, i 
rode up between him and the dogs, and Jack slid down 
and passed under the wagon to Kentuck s- side, ihe 
old dog immediately attacked arid nipped Jack sinartly 
in the flank and then sprang away. He was doubtless 
a b’ar dog, for he repeated his maneuver several times 
before Jack got his bearings. , 1 
Jack was a little out of - humor, and while the attack 
of the dog was sudden and in earnest, he did not 
excited but his lip curled and he snarled savagely. He 
was insulted. The dog was now full of assurance and 
enterprise, and he made a savage lunge that carried 
him about a yard too near the danger line, and ne 
collided with a slap from the shoulder that sent him 
into the wagon wheels ; as he caromed from tnirn, and 
tried to present his front to the enemy, he received a 
right and left that knocked him fully ten feet, in winch 
performance he nearly knocked his master down, i he 
dog was game, and would have come again to center, 
but for the interference of our own dogs. Kentuck s 
other dog was a mere pup, and a gentle cuff from Jack 
had sent him off ki-yi-ing frantically. _ ^ 
We separated the dogs, Kentuck trying without suc- 
cess to kick our dogs with his iron-shod heels Jack 
had meandered off to some water, with an indifference 
that implied his contempt for trifling annoyances. I he 
dogs having quieted, Kentuck’s b’ar dog went away 
and laid down by the house. He was not entirely satis- 
fied, but he was not nearly as enthusiastic as he had 
been. - .r-'-’ ■ 
Kentuck was grieved that his dog had ^ undertaken 
more than he could carry out, but he maintained his 
aggressive demeanor. q 
%e don’t wanter fight yer pet b ar,^Telle^. Git 
out and climb down and make yerselves easy Hev yer 
got any whisky? Hooray fer Old Kaintucky. 
“Hang you and old Kentucky! What do you mean 
by stopping us on this road? Isn’t this a public roa . 
What do you mean by holding us up in this way? Do 
you want to rob us? What kind of^^a spindle-legged 
gorilla do you think you are, anyhow?” ,.1 , t 
I had assumed this tone_ with full assurance that 
was backed up by moral right, as well as by Enochs 
and Dick, and I now proposed to outdo Kentuck at 
his own game. We all looked it, whether we were tough 
“Hold on, pardner, go slow. I hevn t held ye up, but 
I’m likely ter do it!” he replied, adding some profanity. 
“If you are going to do that or anything else, it s 
your move. Come, play up, boys, this old scarecrow 
is the man who says he can scare the livers out of a 
wagon load of emigrants, any time. We re emigrants^ 
“What do you want to do with him! exclaimed 
Enochs, as he got out of the wagon with a little mo^ 
indifference than I expected. He wants raw dog 
an’ I’m blessed if we don’t feed hirn some! Dick wa.s 
also getting down, while three or four magazine guns 
of the latest models had somehow got around to the 
side of the wagon within reach. Kentuck had a belt 
on with a long knife in it, while at the side^of his dooi- 
way stood his long muzzle-loading rifle, that was Qouht- 
less very certain for a single shot. With 311st a little 
hesitation he weakened inglqriously, however. ^ ^ ^ 
“I never said it, boys — er, if I did, I was drmkin , yer 
welcome to this ranch. Do yer want hay._ Hoor 
“Come here, Kentuck, an take a drink, replied 
Enochs. “Confound it, man, we’re tenderfeet and you 
had us .skeered. But it’s all right These boys are a 
little careless. Come and take a drink. r,. , 
The second invitation was superfluous. At the tiist 
appearance of a bottle Kentuck got under way to it, and 
I do not think I ever saw a man show as much un 
mistakable satisfaction as he did as he' grasped it lam 
his head back and drank from the gurgling contents. 
After having taken about a pint he let go tp °bserve, 
“Hooray fer Old Kaintucky! and added. Heie s tu, 
agin fellers,” and he repeated the operation with inore 
satisfaction than ever. If our ^whisky was not first- 
class, it was certainly high-proof, and Kentuck praised 
it effusively. It tasted of old Kentucky. 
He was 'now hospitality personified, and he urged us 
to camp, make his house our quarters and help our- 
selves. We liked the open air too well, however, and 
told him how we had missed our road. He gave s 
explicit directions, which afterward proved correct, for 
we found our turning off place without trouble. It was 
mp .the course of a little creek, where all signs of the 
road were covered with grayel^ and sand, which ac 
counted for our failure to see it in the first place. 
were about to set out, Kentuck bi ought out a 
venison harii, from some cranny about Iris house, and 
firmly insisted upon our taking it along. It was as 
fat as mutton, but we did not want to take it from the 
° nygr ^got ter take it,” he insisted. “Ef yer don’t 
wanter eat it yourselves, giv’ it ter the b’ar. When thet 
b’ar gitg growth he’s gwme ter be considerable. 
We finally accepted the venison after he told us it 
“warn’t enny tr’uble fer him ter git all ther meat he 
wanted.” We left him in exchange a bottle that had 
a nectar in it which, to his notion, was richer than 
gold, for it reminded him of old Kentucky. 
The old man was not such a wicked customer after 
all — not when he perceived that it wouldn’t pay. 
Ransacker. 
[to be continued.] 
The Quails of the United States. 
BY SYLVESTER D. JUDD, ASSISTANT, BIOLOGICAL SURVEY. 
(Continued from page 312.) 
Focd Habits of BoLwhite. 
Both field and laboratory investigations of the food 
habits of the bobwhite have been conducted by the 
Biological Survey. The field work was confined chiefly 
to Maryland and Virginia, and, although it represents 
in some degree- every month in the year, has been 
limited mainly to the breeding and the hunting seasons. 
The laboratory work to determine the different kinds 
of food and their proportions has included examina- 
tion of the contents of crops and gizzards from 918 
birds. This material was collected from twenty-one 
States, Canada, the District of Columbia, and Mexico, 
but chiefly from New York, Maryland, Virginia, 
Florida, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and 
Texas. Stomachs were obtained each month of the 
year, but unfortunately few were collected in the breed- 
ing season. Laboratory work included also feeding 
experiments with three pairs of captive bobwhites ob- 
tained from Kansas. 
The bird’s digestive organs are well adapted to the 
character of its diet. The stomach, or gizzard, as it is 
commonly called, is provided with powerful muscles 
for grinding seeds on which the bird largely subsists.' 
The crop, a sac-like enlargement of the oesophagus, Is- * 
a mere- membranous receptacle for first receiving the' 
food, and is without muscles. Its capacity is usually 
from four to six times that of the stomach. 
The -bobwhite is insectivorous as well as graminivor- 
ous. It is, in fact, one of our most nearly omnivorous 
species. In addition to seeds, fruit, leaves, buds, tubers, 
and insects, it has been known to eat spiders, myria- 
pods, crustaceans, mollusks, and even batrachians. The 
food for the year as a whole, calculated by volume and 
determined by analysis of the contents of 918 stomachs, 
consisted' of vegetable matter, 83.59 per cent., and ani- 
mal matter, 16.41 per cent. In addition, there was 
mineral matter varying in amount from i to 5_per cent, 
of the gross contents of the stomachs, and in excep- 
tional cases rising to 3 per cent. This usually consisted 
of sand, with coarser bits of quartz _ 2 to 7 mm. in 
diameter, which were taken to i^ulverize the food and 
thus render it easier of assimilation. 
The vegetable part of the food consisted of grain, 
17.38 per cent.; various seeds, chiefly weeds, 52-83 per 
cent., and miscellaneous vegetable matter, 3.18 per cent. 
The animal matter in the food was distributed as fol- 
lows: beetles, 6.92 per cent.; grasshoppers, 3.17 per 
cent.; bugs, 2.77 per cent.; caterpillars, 0.95 per cent.: 
miscellaneous insects, 0.70 per cent,; and other in- 
vertebrates, largely spiders, 1.36 per cent. 
The insect food of bobwhite, in comparison with that 
of other birds, is interesting. It includes fewer cater- 
pillars, ants and other hymenoptera, but more bugs; 
and, singularly enough in a terrestrial feeder, nearly 
twice as large a proportion of beetles as of grass- 
hoppers. The meadow lark, jier contra, another, ter- 
restrial feeder, takes 29 per cent, of grasshoppers and 
only 18 per cent, of beetles. 
The food of the bobwhite for the year is noteworthy 
in several respects. Its character varies with the sea- 
son. From October to March, it consists almost ex- 
clusively of vegetable matter — for February and March 
■ 99.8 per cent, of vegetable food appearing in analysis- 
while in late spring and in summer it is made up largely 
of insects, August showing 44.1 per cent, of insect food. 
The grain taken, as a rule, is derived neither from 
newly sown fields nor from standing crops, but is 
gleaned from stubble fields after harvest. Grain forms 
a less prominent part of the food than the seeds of 
weeds, which are the most important element of all 
and make up one-half of the food for the year.^ The 
most distinctive feature of this, as a whole, is the 
large proportion — 15.52 per cent— of leguminous seeds, 
a food seldom eaten by the various .species of sparro'ws 
or other terrestrial feeders. A small fraction of this 
seed comes from cultivated plants, especially the cow- 
pea; the rest is derived from wild plants, most of them 
classed as weeds. Leguminous seeds appear to be 
most largely consumed during December, when they 
form 25 per cent, of the food. The iS -05 cent, of 
insect food, although a comparatively small part of the 
total, is of extreme, importance, since it contains many 
pests that are generally avoided by non-gallinaceous 
birds. Noteworthy among these are the potato beetle, 
twelve-spotted cucumber beetle, striped cucumber beetle, 
squash ladybird beetle, various cut-worms, the tobacco 
worm, cotton worm, cotton bollworm, the clover weevil, 
imbricated snout beetle. May beetle, click beetle, the 
red-legged grasshopper. Rocky Mountain locust, and 
cinch bug. , , r ,.1 
It should be observed that in the search for these 
pests and for weed seeds the bobwhite, unlike many- 
birds of the woodland, hedgerow, and orchard, extends 
its foraging to the center of the largest fields, thus pro- 
tecting the growing crops. 
Grain as Food. 
Vegetable matter has long been knowiq to be an 
important element of the food of the bobwhite; indeed 
many people suppose that it constitutes the entire food 
of the bird. The impression that the bobwhite eats 
little else than grain has prevailed even among many 
sportsmen Avho have bagged most of their game ni 
the stubble field. The present analysis, however, dis- 
closes that grain forms scarcely more than_ one-sixth 
of the food. Laboratory study shoivs that it is eaten 
in every month of the year, the maximum, 46 per cent, 
of the food for the month, having been taken m March, 
In the specimens examined corn amounts to 11.96 per 
cent, of the total food for the year, while all other 
kinds collectively amount to only 5.42 per cent. Wheat 
(4.17 per cent.) is next to corn in importance. As 
experiments with captive birds failed to show marked 
preference for either corn or wheat, the disproportion 
between the two above noted is probably due to the fact 
that more corn than wheat is grown in the country 
where our birds were obtained. The remaining cereal 
food (1.25 per cent, of the total) is miscellaneous grain, 
including Kafir corn, sorghum, millet, buckwheat, 
barley, oats, and rye. 
Grain-eating birds are likely to do much harm to 
crops. They may pull up sprouting grain, plunder rhe 
standing crop when it is in the milk, or forage among 
the sheaves at harvest time. The bobwhite, however, 
is a notable exception. The period of germination is 
the time when grain is liable to serious injury by birds. 
But not a single sprouting kernel was found in the 
crops and stomachs of quail examined. Field observa- 
tions, during the years 1899 and 1900, at Marshall Hall 
gave similar evidence. While crows injured sprouting 
corn so seriously during May that several extensive 
replantings, were necessary, bobwhites, unusually abund- 
ant in the vicinity at the same time, were never seen 
to disturb the germinating grain. During November, 
1899, sprouting wheat was saved from crow blackbirds 
only by diligent use of the shotgun; but both then 
and in other seasons the bobwhite was rarely observed 
in winter-wheat fields and never was seen to molest 
the crop. Sprouting oats apparently were not molested, 
though extended observations were not made. No data 
are available for rye and millet, but in newly sown 
buckwheat fields in Essex county, N. J., which the 
writer saw ravaged by doves, there was no sign of 
injury by the bobwhites. Publications on economic 
ornithology and reports received by the Biological 
Survey add testimony of like character. It may safely 
be stated, therefore, that so far as at present known the 
bobwhite does no appreciable harm to sprouting grain. 
In order to learn to what extent the species injures 
ripening grain, observations were made for several 
years at Marshall Hall. Unlike the crow and several 
kinds of blackbirds, the bobwhite did no damage there 
to corn in the milk, nor did it injure ripening wheat 
and oats. Flocks of English sparrows, however, might 
be seen feeding on wheat in the milk, and not _ un- 
commonly a score of goldfinches swayed on the panicles 
of ripening oats. A hen bobwhite shot in a field of ripe 
wheat, June 18, 1903, had much of the grain in its 
crop, though whether obtained from standing heads or 
from fallen kernels did not appear. As the bobwhite 
usually feeds on the ground, and as it was never seen 
feeding from the stalk at Marshall Hall, it appears prob- 
able that it seeks only the fallen grain. At wheat 
harvest it follows the binder, and at Marshall Hall was 
often seen in the harvest field picking up scattered 
wheat. It was not observed there on the shocks, ap- 
pearing to find an abundance of waste kernels. At 
corn harvest also bobwhite takes its share from ^^x- 
IDOsed ears; but the bird is not able to shuck corn, as 
do the crow and wild goose. Several crops of ripe 
oats at Marshall Hall were watched during harvest 
time and furnished no evidence against the bobwhite. 
No report of injury by it elsewhere at harvest time has 
come to the Biological Survey, though damage naay be 
done where peculiar local conditions conjoin with an 
overabundance of birds. 
The bobwhite, however, is a persistent stubble feeder. 
As Mr. Sandys puts it, “He is the gleaner who never 
reaps, who guards the growing crops, who glories over 
a bounteous yield, yet is content to watch and wait for 
those lost grains which fall to him by right.” Where 
fields of wheat stubble support a rank growth of rag- 
weed the sportsman is most likely to find a feeding 
covey. At Marshall Hall, during September, October 
and November, such fields are the favorite haunt.s of 
the birds. On this farm corn has a greater acreage than 
wheat, but the birds are much less often found in corn 
stubble; and, as stomach examinations show, they eat 
much less corn than wheat. Since experiments with 
captive birds showed no preference for wheat, food 
other than grain may have kept, them' on the wheat 
stubble. Along the Roanoke in Virginia, where wheat 
is not grown, bobwhites feed in corn fields. 
On the Western prairies, where cornstalks left stand- 
ing in the fields afford good cover, the birds are more 
often found in cornfields. Six birds collected from 
such fields in November, 1891, at Badger, Neb., con- 
tained 181 whole kernels of corn; the smallest number 
in a crop was 20 and the largest 48. _ 
It is not unusual to find from 100 to 200 grains of 
wheat in a crop. . A bobwhite shot at West Appo- 
mattox Va.. in December, 1902, had its crop distended 
almost to bursting with 508 grains of wheat. this 
habit of gleaning waste grain after harvest is beneficial 
to the farm, for volunteer grain is not desiiable, es- 
pecially where certain ■ insect pests or parasitic fungi 
are to be combated. As the scattered kernels are 
often too far afield to be_ gathered by domestic poultry, 
the services of the bobwhite in this res]iect are especially 
'^'^The bobwhite sometimes eats the seeds of certain 
cultivated leguminous plants. Both the black-eye 
and the clay cowpeas {Vigna sinensis) have been found 
in stomachs, and one contained thirty-five peas of the 
latter variety. lu Westmoreland and Miecklenburg 
counties, Va., cowpea patches are favorite resorts for 
the birds in November and December. Garden peas 
were found in crops collected by Mr. Walter Hoxie 
at Frogmore, S. C. In rare instances the bobwhite 
picks up clover seeds, and it has been known to eat a 
lima bean. It may take also Kafir corn and sorghum, 
and it has a decided liking for millet _ (Chcetochloa 
■ italica), a taste particularly noticeable in birds of 
Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. A crop _ from 
Onaga Kans., contained 1,000 millet seeds. No signifi- 
cant damage to millet has been reported and the birds 
may secure most of this food from stubble fields. 
Wted Seeds as Food. 
Weeds appropriate the space, light, water, and food 
of plants that directly or indirectly support man. A 
million weeds may spring up on a single acre, and. a 
