96 
The Food of Birds. 
experienced specialist, except where determination was 
evidently impossible.* 
These memoranda were afterwards classified and the 
data arranged in tabular form, so as to give a complete 
recapitulation and summary of the food of each species 
for each month. The tables thus constructed have fur- 
nished the basis for the discussion of the food of the spe- 
cies; and a similar tabular summary of the food of the 
family has been used in a similar way. Thus every fact 
observed appears in the final conclusion, and receives, 
there, its due weight. 
Family TUBDID^E. The Tlirushes.f 
This family consists, in Illinois, of nine species of 
birds ; the robin, the catbird, the brown thrush, the wood 
thrush, the hermit thrush, Swainson’s thrush, the Alice 
thrush, the mocking-bird and Wilson’s thrush or the 
Veery. The first four of these stay with us in this lati- 
tude during the summer; the others emigrate beyond our 
borders, except the mocking-bird, and that only reaches 
the southern third of the State in any considerable num- 
bers. I have now carefully studied the food of three hun- 
dred and fifteen specimens of this family, shot in various 
parts of Illinois, and in all months from February to 
October. 
Turdus migratorius, L. The Bobin. 
This bird, as familiar to every one as the domestic cat, 
is the most abundant of the thrushes, and plays so large 
a part in the economy of the farm and garden as to make 
the question of its food one of unusual importance. The 
species ranges from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from 
the Mexican plateau to the Arctic circle, at home in all 
the latitudes and longitudes of this vast and varied coun- 
try. I cannot, of course, attempt to determine, at present, 
the food of the species throughout this immense area, 
* For assistance of this sort, I am indebted above all others to Prof. C. 
V. Riley, Chief of the U. S. Entomological Commission at Washington, 
D. C. I have called upon him especially for the identification of larvae, 
and my drafts have never been dishonored. 
t The general reader is referred to the “recapitulations” and the dis- 
cussions of “the economic relations” of each species for the most im- 
portant facts of these papers. 
