172 
YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
by poisoning the flesh with its barbed hairs, which are scattered 
broadcast by the wind. 
Grouse and quail.— Grouse and quail are largely vegetarian, 
though the several species have enviable records as successful hunters 
of insects. The habit of eating the buds of fruit trees in spring is 
sometimes cited against our ruffed grouse as a serious fault, but 
usually trees are not harmed by the process. 
The value of all the members of the grouse family, as of waterfowl 
and waders, for food is great and is constantly increasing as the birds 
diminish in numbers. Quail have always been favorite objects of 
pursuit by sportsmen, and by preserving the quail on a large farm, 
or on a number of adjoining farms, and asking a fair fee from sports¬ 
men for the privilege of shooting, a considerable revenue may be 
derived, and it is not unlikely that the game on a large tract of, say, 
several hundred acres may be made to yield a revenue as large as that 
from a good-sized poultry yard, or even larger. However, perhaps 
the most valuable service to the farmer rendered by bobwhite is the 
destruction of the seeds of weeds, although the total number of in¬ 
sects eaten in a year by a covey on the farm is enormous, and it is 
questionable if the value of game birds to the farmer, especially the 
quail, as weed and insect destroyers be not greater than their value as 
a source of revenue from sportsmen or as food. It is pretty safe to 
assert that, except where grouse and quail are so numerous that a cer¬ 
tain percentge of the increase can be spared, the farmer can not afford 
to sacrifice them to sport or to the market. (See PL VIII.) 
Sparrow family.— The finch, or sparrow, family is very important 
to the agriculturist. The group is large, and in North America 
comprises more than a seventh of all the birds. Most of them are 
small and plainly colored; some are gregarious, and most are mi¬ 
gratory, leaving the United States in winter. Their chief value to the 
farmer lies in the fact that the majority of them are indefatigable 
in their search for seeds of weeds, which indeed constitute a large 
part of their fare the year round. (See PI. IX.) Practically all of 
the food of at least one of them—the tree sparrow—consists of seed. 
If we estimate that a single tree sparrow eats a quarter of an ounce of 
weed seed daily—and stomach examinations by Professor Peal show 
that this is a fair estimate—this species in a State the size of Iowa 
consumes more than 800 tons of seed annually. And there are many 
other sparrows whose appetite for weed seed falls little short of that 
of the tree sparrow. 
As every farmer knows, the cost of farming is largely augmented 
by the expense of fighting weeds, the seeds of many of which, espe¬ 
cially of certain noxious kinds, are very numerous and are capable 
of germinating after being long buried in the soil. As weeds have 
been estimated annually to damage crop land on the average about a 
