s ^ THE RELATION OF SPARROWS TO AGRICULTURE. 
the vast forest which stretches from Labrador to* Alaska. Summering 
in this region, as it does, n is of qo economic importance until it 
migrates south in autumn Into the agricultural lands of Canada and 
the United States. It then spreads over the whole count ry to the Gulf 
of Mexico. 
The fox sparrow is the largest sparrow in the United States, 
exclusive of Alaska. It is round often in the woods, where it is likely 
to be mistaken for a hermit thrush on account of its Large size, red- 
dish color, and spotted breast. Its song is utterly unsparrowlike, a 
unique performance that seems not in the least akin to bird music, 
hni more like the soft tinkling of tiny silver bells. In food habits it 
is a true sparrow, showing some resemblance, however, to the cardinal 
grosbeak (also a member of the finch family) in its fondness for ber- 
ries, or, as is more likely, berry seeds. Both the fox sparrow and the 
cardinal have powerful bills, and are t h ns able to feed on seeds which 
weaker-billed species of seed-eating birds can not crack. 
The food, as indicated by the examination of 127 stomachs, collected 
principally in the Eastern States, and during every month excepting 
June, July, and August, consists of animal matter, 14 percent, and 
vegetable matter, 86 percent. The animal food is of little interest 
excepting in the month of April, when the bird begins eating largely 
of millepeds of the Julus group — 20 percent of the food for the month 
consisting of these invertebrates — and at the same time develops such 
a taste for ground-beetles as to raise this item of its month's diet to 
10 percent. The quantity of these useful insects destroyed during 
the summer, when the bird is in its home in the far north, is probably 
much less. 
The vegetable food differs from that of most other sparrows, in that 
it contains less grass seed (only 1 percent), less grain, and more fruit, 
ragweed, and polygonum. Half of the food consists of ragweed and 
polygonum and more than a quarter of fruit. In its dependence on 
fruit the fox sparrow resembles the white-throated sparrow. It does 
no direct damage to cultivated fruit, though it occasionally eats the 
buds of peach trees and pear trees. 1 Bradford Torrey has observed it 
feeding on the fruit of burning bush {Euonymus americana). % C. A. 
Averill, Bridgeport, Conn., reports that he has found it eating the 
berries of the red cedar (Jwniperus virgmiana), and James II. Gaut, 
of the Biological Survey, says that he has seen it feeding on poke ber- 
ries in November in Washington. 
But although 28 percent of the food contents of the stomachs exam- 
ined consisted of the seeds of berries and of fruit skin, it is safe to say 
that barely a third of this percentage represents actual fruit destruc- 
tion, and that the remaining two-thirds of the seeds were eaten after 
the pulp of the fruit had been removed by other agents. In only 7 of 
'Letter from P.H. Metcalf, Holyoke, Mass.. L890. 
-Birds in the Bush. p. 220, L886. 
