7 
peal.” The process is not without its difficulties. The contents of the stomach 
are usually mixed, broken and partly digested and in the poorest possible shape foi 
examination. To tell what the fragments once belonged to they have to be caie- 
fully cleaned, sorted and examined under a microscope by skilled experts in ento¬ 
mology, botany and other branches of science. Still in spite of all difficulties a 
great amount of work has been done, and within the last few years the farmer has 
been furnished with a safe and scientific basis for his policy towards the birds. 
With the great majority the good they do is so great and the harm, if any , so 
trifling, that encouragement and protection will freely be given them at all times. 
This will include — if we except the English sparrow — all our smaller birds; the 
warblers, vireos, flycatchers, wrens, chickadees, bluebirds and many others. But 
there are a few, usually the larger species, that do not bear this unsullied reputation, 
and these must have our special attention. 
Gardeners have long looked on the robin with suspicion; its abundance, its 
size, its boldness in entering our gardens and orchards, render it quite a factor for 
the weal or woe of the fruit grower; so it has received an unusual share of attention 
from investigators. Even when the snows of winter linger late the robins come at 
their appointed time and* content themselves with last year s sumach or wild grapes. 
Once the lawns are clear they descend to them and subsist chiefly on fly larvae. Of 
these 175 have been counted in a single stomach. As the season advances the diet is 
more varied, larvae of many kinds, beetles, grasshoppers and other ground insects 
receiving attention. During March twenty per cent of their food is cutworms, in 
April beetles are often in the majority; but up to the end of May, ninety-five percent 
of their food is insects. Then comes a change. During June I use figures campiled 
for our own state—fifty-five per cent is fruit, in July this figure rises to seventy-nine 
per cent, in August it is fifty-six but more than half of this is wild cherries. For 
the balance of the year fruit predominates, wild grapes being most favored but forty- 
one different kinds of wild berries have been found in the stomachs. For the whole 
year sixty-five per cent of the food is insects, twenty-five domestic and ten per cent 
wild fruit. Of the insects we find that forty-three per cent are injurious and thirty- 
six per cent beneficial species, while twenty-one per cent are neutral. The question 
becomes very complicated for we would not only have to know the value of the fruit, 
but the damage done by the injurious species, including those that would have been 
destroyed by the beneficial species, and other details, all reduced to dollars and cents. 
It is evident we cannot enter on this subject here, but it has been worked out thor¬ 
oughly and carefully elsewhere, and in concluding an exhaustive paper on the subject 
Professor Forbes says; “I, for my part, do not believe that the horticulturist can 
sell his small fruits anywhere in the ordinary markets of the world at so high a price 
as to the robin, provided he uses proper diligence that the little huckster does not 
overreach him in the bargain.” _ • 
The brown thrush or thrasher eats proportionately half as many more insects 
than does the robin. This difference comes in the fall when it takes its share of 
grasshoppers in place of the wild fruit preferred by its associate; its fondness for 
May-beetles also deserves favorable mention. 
The catbird prefers other kinds of fruit and insects and therefore fills a diffeient 
place from the robin or thrasher in horticultural economy. But the proportions of 
gain or loss on its account are quite similar, though on the whole it is not so bene¬ 
ficial. Less than a fifth of its food consists of cultivated fruits, these being chiefly 
raspberries and blackberries; and more than half of beetles, ants, grasshoppers and 
