FOOD INJURIOUS IN EFFECT ON AGRICULTURE. 21 
FOOD INJURIOUS IN EFFECT OX AGRICULTURE. 
The injurious part of the food of sparrows, the removal of which 
tends to cause a harmful effect upon crops, is made up of useful 
insects and spoils from cultivated crops, such as grain and fruit. 
Beneficial insects seldom amount to more than 2 percent of the food. 
They consist mostly of enemies of insect pests and a very few flower- 
fertilizing species, such as certain wasps and some small bees of 
the genera Andre no and Hal ictus. The insect enemies are either 
ground-beetles (Carabidse) or parasitic wasps. The particular ground- 
beetles selected belong to the less useful predatory kinds. They are 
small species, the exact economic position of which is not yet known, 
and include Amara, AnisodactyJus, Agonoderus, Bembidium, and the 
smaller species of Harpalus. One species — Agonoderus paffipes — 
has been found injurious to grain, and in time it and some other slightly 
carnivorous carabids may become pests like the related Zabrus gibbus 
of Europe. The parasitic Hymenoptera include such wasps as the 
smaller Ichneunionidse, the larger Braconida?, and Seoliidae of the 
genera My&ine and Tiphia. But the quantity of useful insects eaten by 
sparrows is small: omitting those taken by the English and field spar- 
rows, it is insignificant. And though 4 percent of the food of the latter 
consists of useful insects — a larger percentage than is attained by any 
other member of the sparrow family — yet this record is very favorable 
compared with those of many birds. The loggerhead shrike and the 
king-bird, for example, take 12 percent and 20 percent, respectively, 
of their food in beneficial insects, and there are other birds whose 
records are still less creditable. 
Cultivated fruit forms uo significant part of the food of sparrows. 
The white-crowned sparrow occasionally punctures a few grapes in 
the East: the English sparrow adds more or less fruit destruction to 
his many other sins; and it is probable that one or two western spe- 
do some little damage of this kind: but with these exceptions the 
sparrow family is harmless to orchard and vineyard. 
The English sparrow does so much damage to grain that it is con- 
sidered a pest, and the native sparrows might naturally be suspected 
of having similar habits; but though they frequently sample grain in 
stubble-fields, they have not as yet been found committing serious 
depredations. In order to compare the grain-eating propensities of 
the various species, specimens were collected on a farm a few miles 
south of Washington, D. C, before and after the wheat was cut. Of 
nineteen native birds, representing song, field, chipping, and grass- 
hopper sparrows, only two had eaten grain, and these had taken only 
one kernel each, while, on the other hand, of five English sparrows 
that were examined every one was gorged with wheat. On this par- 
ticular farm flocks of English sparrows pillage the wheat crop from 
the time it comes in milk until it is threshed; and attack corn in 
