One of the recommendations of the Departmental Committee 
appointed in 1903 to enquire into and report upon the existing 
condition of fruit culture in Great Britain was a proposal that 
the Board should establish a “ bureau of information ” dealing 
with matters connected with the fruit industry. In the Annual 
Report of the Intelligence Division of the Board for 1906 atten- 
tion was drawn to the difficulty in carrying out this recommenda- 
tion completely, but it was pointed out that an accurate enquiry ^ 
into the habits and food of birds was much needed, especially 
into the assertions that these habits are undergoing a change in 
consequence of the changing conditions in which the wild life of 
England is placed, and it was determined, in order, as far as 
possible, to comply with the suggestions of the Committee, to 
begin with an enquiry on this subject. As a preliminary contribu- 
tion, a report by Professor Newstead, dealing with the records 
which he had collected through a period of 20 years, and based 
upon 871 post-mortem examinations, was published as a 
Supplement to the J ournal , and a proposal was under considera- 
tion for an extension of the work when, in the autumn of 1908, 
the British Association for the Advancement of Natural Science 
appointed a Committee to carry out investigations on the same 
subject, and the Board decided to work in conjunction with this 
body. The procedure adopted was to appeal to correspondents 
to send in specimens of birds recently shot, in order that the 
food contents of their crops might be examined and determined. 
The birds selected for this purpose were the rook, the starling 
and the chaffinch, as to whose character some doubt had been 
felt. The work of examining the birds was at first undertaken 
by Dr. Gordon Hewitt, and, after his appointment to the post 
of Entomologist to the Canadian Government, by Mr. H. S. 
Leigh, whose report is appended. The expenses of the enquiry 
were at first defrayed by a small grant from the British Associa- 
tion, supplemented by additional funds from the Board, but after 
the creation of the Development Fund a substantial grant was 
made by the Board out of the sum placed at their disposal for 
scientific research. For some time, all specimens of birds were 
sent to Air. Leigh at Manchester, but during the latter part of 
the investigation an arrangement was made with Mr. F. V. 
Theobald, also a member of the Committee, who had been con- 
ducting some enquiries into the food of birds independently, 
