14 GROUSE AND WILD TURKEYS OF UNITED STATES. 
consin, Nebraska, and Texas; Illinois and Ontario furnished the 
rest. The food consisted of 14.11 percent animal matter and 85.89 
i^ercent vegetable matter. The former was insects; the latter seeds, 
fruit, grain, leaves, flowers, and bud twigs. 
Insect Food. 
The insect food included 12.78 percent of grasshoppers, 0.48 per- 
cent of beetles, 0.39 percent of bugs, 0.1'2 percent of ants and other 
Hymenoptera, 0.29 percent of other insects, and 0.0.") percent of 
spiders. The ruffed grouse takes about one-sixth less and the 
bobwhite about one-third more of insects than the prairie hen. 
Although the bobwhite destroys injurious grasshoppers, the relative 
proportions of grasshoppers and beetles consumed by it and by the 
prairie hen are notably different. In the food of the bobwhite the 
grasshop2)ers are to the beetles as 3.71 to G.92; with the prairie hen 
the ratio stands as 12.78 to 0.48. Indeed, grasshoppers constitute 
the bulk of the prairie hen's animal diet, the reason being probably 
that on the prairies the grasshoppers vastly outnumber all other 
sizable insects. For a gallinaceous bird the prairie hen is highly 
insectivorous from May to October, inclusive, insects constituting 
on^-third of the fare of the specimens shot during this period. The 
species is particularly valuable as an enemy of the Rocky Mountain 
locust. During an invasion by this pest in Nebraska, 1() out of 20 
grouse killed b}' Prof. Samuel Aughey from May to October, inclusive, 
had eaten 866 locusts — a creditable performance, economically rated. 
Some ornithologists believe that the diminution in the number of 
prairie hens is in a measure responsible for the ravages of certain 
insects. P^armers who know these facts must regret the extinction of 
the bird in States where it once thrived, and they may well support 
measures for reintroducing and protecting it. 
Almost every kind of grasshopper and locust appears to be accept- 
able to the prairie hen. In the following list are named the species of 
short-horned grasshoppers identified in its food : 
Opomula sj). ScJnstoccrra (uncricana. 
Mcrniirid dlacris. Cordillacris occipitalis. 
I'hiliftostronia quadrimaculatum. Stctiohothnis curtiprtini.'i. 
Leptymna sp. MclanopUift fctiiur-ruhrum. 
Psolassa sp. Mchuwplus (itlatiis. 
Agencotctti.r sciiddcri. Melanoplus hivittatus. 
tS}fJi<ir(i(jc)ti(/u sp. 
The prairie hen eats also long-horned grasshoppers {XipMdiifm sp., 
Conocephalus sp., and Orchelimum sp.) and crickets {Gryllus sp.) 
and tree crickets ((Eraitfhiis sp.). 
In its beetle diet the prairie hen makes up in variety what it lacks 
in quantity. Unlike our common small passerine birds, but like our 
other gallinaceous birds, it feeds on the harmful leaf beetles. It 
