242 HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 
to eighteen pennyweights of beef or thirty-six 
pennyweights of earth-worms per day. From 
the fact that the bird thus continued in its con- 
finement, with certainly much less exercise than 
in the wild state, to eat one-third of its weight 
of clear flesh daily, the Professor concludes that 
the food consumed by it when young was not 
much more than must always be provided by 
the parents of wild birds. 
But it is more particularly with regard to the 
quality of the food of birds that we know so little. 
In the pewee and the king-bird the naturalist 
sees a couple of large ‘‘ fly-catchers,” of exceed- 
ingly interesting habits, to which the largest 
courtesies should be extended ; while in the eyes 
of many farmers these birds are simply malevo- 
lent destroyers of bees; and it may well be pos- 
sible that, by destroying insectivorous insects 
as well as bees, these birds really do more harm 
than good, looking of course from the lowest 
utilitarian point of view. 
Everybody is aware that the crow eats a few 
grains of corn at the time of planting, and that 
the robin eats cherries and strawberries with 
avidity when these are to be had, but what do 
most of us know of the food of the crow, or of the 
robin, during the other fifty weeks of the year, 
more than that the latter is occasionally to be 
seen regaling himself upon earth-worms and the 
former upon carrion? that the contents of the 
stomachs of a dozen or two of crows have been 
examined and recorded by naturalists? and that 
the species is accused of sucking the eggs and 
destroying the young of various small birds 
which nest upon the ground? By the standard 
‘ works upon Ornithology we are told that the 
, crow devours insects, grubs, worms; that he 
destroys mice, moles, and other small quadru- 
peds; and that he will eat snakes, frogs, and 
the like, as well as fruits, seeds, and vegeta- 
bles. But the testimony is so meagre that we 
may well pause to question its worth when called 
to sit in judgment upon the moot question wheth- 
er or no, year in year aut, the crow does com- 
mit more of good than of evil as regards man- 
kind. 
Then there is the cherry-bird, with his strik- 
ing traits of beauty, beneficence, and evil, to- 
day sweeping away the canker-worms as with 
fire and sword; and to-morrow cleaning out the 
cherry-trees as effectually as if a flight of locusts 
had passed over the land; and again, a few 
months later, feasting upon the cedar-berries in 
the same reckless way. And yet how little do 
we really know of the ordinary food of the cher- 
ry-bird; for with the foregoing items we have 
accounted for only three or four weeks of his 
yearly life. It is note-worthy, by-the-way, that, 
with the Baltimore oriole, the cherry-bird is 
one of the very few members of the feathered 
tribe which will greedily eat the hairy caterpil- 
lars which infest our orchard trees. 
The American goldfinch, or black-winged 
yellow-bird, with his notorious liking for the 
seeds of dandelions, lettuce, and the thistle, can 
be followed through a month or two, and some 
of the vireos and wood-warblers no doubt find 
an abundance of moths and other insects to sup- 
ply their wants; while the dietary of the vari- 
ous woodpeckers seems to be tolerably well un- 
derstood, though it has lately been asked by a 
distinguished ornithologist whether, after all, the 
country boy’s name, ‘‘sap-sucker,” as applied 
to some of the woodpeckers, is altogether a mis- 
nomer ? 
But how is it with the swallows? Take the 
hardy ‘‘ white-bellied swallow” (Hirundo bicolor) 
for an example, as he follows the sun northward 
with a seemingly most indiscreet haste. What 
does he find stirring in the insect line during 
the first days of his arrival? What do the blue- 
birds eat from day to day during their long so- 
journ? And so on with all the rest. 
With regard to the robin all these questions 
have: been answered very satisfactorily—at least . 
in so far as a single locality is concerned—by 
Professor Jenks, of Middleborough, Massachu- 
setts, whose very interesting report to the Massa- 
chusetts Horticultural Society will be found in 
the published Journal of that Association. Pro- 
fessor Jenks, having determined to make the food 
of the robin a subject of special investigation 
throughout an entire year, in order that some 
positive conclusion might be arrived at in refer- 
ence to the utility of this bird to the horticul- 
turist, adopted the following plan of investiga- 
tion: (1.) to obtain birds at daybreak, mid-day, 
and sunset; (2.) to obtain birds from both the 
village and the country; and (3.) to preserve in 
alcohol the contents of each gizzard. Begin- 
ning with the first week of March, 1858, speci- 
mens were actually examined at least week- 
ly, and most of the time daily, to December, 
and during the winter months at least semi- 
monthly. 
As far as the specimens procured at daybreak 
were concerned no positive information seems to 
have been obtained, since thé gizzards of these 
are represented to have been either entirely 
empty or but partially distended with well-mac- 
erated food. But the birds killed in the latter 
part of the day were uniformly filled with food 
which had been only recently taken. Numbers 
of male robins made their appearance at Middle- 
borough early in March, but it was not until the 
second week in April that any female birds were 
noticed. From the early part of March up to 
the first of May not a particle of vegetable mat- 
ter was found in the gizzard of a single bird. 
Nine-tenths of the whole mass of food examined 
during this period consisted of a single kind of 
larva, the Bibio albipennis, of Say, though a 
great variety of other insects in all stages of 
growth and development were also met with. 
Of the larva in question from one to two hundred 
specimens were frequently taken from a single 
gizzard, and usually when this larva was found it 
was the only food in the stomach. During the 
month of May the Bibio larva entirely disappeared 
from the gizzards, being replaced, up to the 21st 
of June, by a variety of insects, or worms only, 
including spiders, caterpillars, and beetles of the 
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