Bob -White 
187 
A Good 
Tax-payer 
of the cover afforded by thickets, swamps, or rank grain. They usually 
sleep in open places, where flight in all directions would be unobstructed. 
Probably something like 400,000 sportsmen now go out from the 
cities of this country every year to hunt Bob-white. This bird has a cash 
value to the farmer and land-owner, for he can demand and obtain from 
the sportsmen a fair price for the birds killed on his property. The 
annual Quail crop, if judiciously handled, is worth millions of dollars 
to the farmers of this country. In many cases the rental of the privilege 
of shooting Quails more than pays the taxes of the farm, without de- 
tracting in any way from its value for agricultural purposes. Bob-white 
thus indirectly pays the greater part of the tax in many school-districts,- — - 
that is, the cost of the education of the children. 
Thousands of dollars also are spent in many States in 
leasing rural land on which to hold field-trials of 
dogs ; and in these trials no shooting is done, the dogs merely pointing 
the birds in a competition of skill. 
Bob-white comes into closer contact with the farmer’s crops than 
does any other bird, yet he rarely injures appreciably any kind of grain 
or fruit. Through the investigations of the Biological Survey of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, the fact is now well established 
that Bob-white ranks very high as a destroyer of many of the most de- 
structive insect pests. Among those eaten are potato-beetles, cucumber- 
beetles, wire-worms, weevils (including the Mexican cotton-boll weevil), 
locusts, grasshoppers, chinch-bugs, squash-bugs, and caterpillars. Many 
of these insects are destroyed by scores and hundreds. Mrs. Margaret 
Morse Nice, of Clark University, has published the following list of 
things eaten by captive Quails, each number representing the insects 
eaten during a single meal by one bird: Chinch-bugs, 100; squash-bugs, 
1 2; plant-lice, 2,326; grasshoppers, 39; cutworms, 12; army-worms, 12; 
mosquitos, 568 ; potato-beetles, 101 ; white grubs, 8. 
She found that one Bob-white would devour in a day : Devoured 
Chrysanthemum blackflies, 5,000; flies, 1,350; rose- 
slugs, 1,286; miscellaneous insects, 700, of which 300 were grasshoppers. 
Mrs. Nice has given a list of 141 different species of insects eaten 
by the Quail, nearly all of which are injurious, and, as Dr. Charles F. 
Hodge has remarked, a bird that eats so many injurious insects is welcome 
to the beneficial ones as well ; for, apparently, if we could have enough 
Bob-whites they would leave nothing for the useful insects to do ! 
As a destroyer of weeds, Bob-white stands preeminent. Mrs. Nice 
made a list of 129 weeds the seeds of which are eaten by this little 
gleaner ; they are digested and the germs destroyed. The number of 
seeds taken by one bird at a single meal varies from 105 seeds of stink- 
weed and 400 of pigweed to 5,000 of pigeon-grass and 10,000 of lamb’s- 
quarters ; while the number taken by one bird in a day varies from 600 
of burdock to 30,000 of rabbit’s-foot clover. Dr. Sylvester Judd has 
reached the conclusion, by a careful computation, that the Bob-whites 
of Virginia and North Carolina consume annually, between September 1 
