THE FOOD OF THE ROBIN. 123 
The general summary for the month is as follows: 
Vegetable food, 38.085 per cent. in 10 stomachs, 
Crustacea, 1.3875 per cent. in 1 stomach. 
Vermes, 2.062 per cent. in 1 stomach. 
Myriapoda, 2.062 per cent. in 2 stomachs. 
Arachnida, .7 per cent. in 1 stomach. 
Insecta, 55.716 per cent. in 15 stomachs. 
Beneficial species, 54.536 per cent. 
Injurious species, 13.825 per cent. 
Neutral species, 31.639 per cent. 
September.—Only five robins were shot during this month. Three of 
these had eaten nothing but black cherries, one, black cherries and carabid 
beetles, and one, blackberries and a Melanoplus femuwr-rubrum, the red- 
legged grasshopper and the one that is often so very injurious to grass and 
grain. At this time of the year robins begin to congregrate into flocks, 
and a large part of their food is vegetable, consisting of wild cherries, 
grapes, moon-seed, poke-ber1y, bitter-sweet (Celastrus scandens) and other 
fruits which have a nutritious portion. I shot two robins in October, 
1890, whose stomachs contained nothing but the fruit of bitter-sweet. 
The robin does his share of scattering the seeds of various more or less 
troublesome plants, for the seeds of pulpy fruits, when taken with the 
fruits as food and afterwards voided in waste places and along fence rOWS: 
are usually left in very favorable places for growth. The germinative 
power of the seeds is very seldom injured by passing through the robin. 
Since, on account of the small number shot during September, I have 
left this month out in making a general summary, each one may decide 
for himself whether the fact that the robin helps to distribute the plants 
above mentioned is to be considered as a point ior or against the robin. 
But let it not be supposed that by eating the fruit of these plants the robin 
is in that measure an enemy to them; on the contrary he only serves to 
scatter them the more widely. . 
Birds are high livers. Their temperature is greater than that of 
mammals. They are extremely active, spending most of their time upon 
the wing. This unusual amount of muscular and nervous expenditure 
requires for its maintenance a correspondingly large amount of nourish- 
ment. It will readily be granted that those birds which take mostly insect 
food exercise no small influence upon the numbers of those insects on 
which they feed. So far as our observations go, the robin is almost wholly 
insectivorous during April and May. It should also be kept in mind that 
the robin is a species which throughout Ohio is abundant. While the 
larve of Bibio albipennis are to be found, they seem to be preferred to any 
other species of insect. Perhaps the reason for this is the fact that they 
