48 The Food Relations of the Carabidce and Coccinellidce. 
The combination of these various tables into the final one given 
will tend to correct the deficiencies of the separate exhibits, and the 
averages of that table will consequently be found to represent 
more closely the general food of the family than either of the 
others. 
Continuing the comparison of the three separate tables, we find 
that the beetles represented by the first had taken insects to the 
amount of twenty-six per cent. ; that those from the orchard had 
about doubled this ratio; while those from the cabbage field fell 
a little short of it. This last fact is probably related to the time 
of the year when these beetles were taken — the middle of April 
in a very late spring, when insect life in general was but just 
beginning to stir abroad. The ratios of Diptera, Coleoptera, and 
Hemiptera, were but trivial in all these groups, and not worth 
separate mention. The extraordinary difficulty of determining 
the elements of the vegetable food from the minute fragments 
found in the stomachs of these beetles, makes it impossible to 
enter into much detail with respect to this. The miscellaneous 
collections and those from the cabbage field had found a little 
over half their food in the structures of plants, while those from 
the orchard had obtained from this source somewhat less than a 
quarter. Pollen of exogenous plants, which will be found to form 
so large a ratio of the food of the family next to j^e considered, 
appeared here only in three of the specimens, and amounted to 
but three per cent, of the entire food of the first group. These 
beetles fed much more largely on graminaceous plants, the recog- 
nizable tissues of which amounted to about seventeen per cent, 
in the first group, and eight in each of the special col- 
lections. Funu-i were reckoned at about one-tenth of the food of 
O 
the beetles included in the first collection, and only two per cent, 
of those from the orchard. The spores of the omnipresent Hel- 
minthosporium make the most important contribution to this 
element of the food, but a number of other genera were recog- 
nized. 
A few words will suffice for the final table, summarizing the 
data relating to all the collections, from whatever source derived. 
This table presents the ratios from one hundred and seventy-five 
specimens, and as already remarked, a little over half the food of 
all consisted of animal matter, about one-third being insects, 
