330 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
equally nitrogenous bean? why should they not eat the little ‘* pea- 
bean,” for example, as readily as the pea itself? and if they are 
anxious to get nitrogen why do they not eat animal food at all 
times as they are known to do occasionally? It was noticed long 
ago by Snell* in Germany that the domestic pigeon sometimes 
eats garden-snails, both the species provided with shells and those 
which are naked, as well as earth-worms, several kinds of smooth 
caterpillars, notably noctua segetum, and maggots and meal-worms 
when they are to be got. Throughout the summer months he found 
minute eggs also in the crops of his pigeons which were appar- 
ently the eggs of snails. Here in Cambridge, Jeffries Wyman,f on 
the occasion of his dissecting a young domestic pigeon *‘ taken 
from the nest and still covered with down,” found the crop very 
largely distended with canker-worms (larve of Anisopteryx ponve- 
taria) in all stages of digestion. Wyman estimated that as many 
as 660 of the canker-worms must have been contained in the crop 
of this one squab, and that the mass was nearly equal to one third 
the weight of the bird. 
The importance of animal-food for young birds has often been 
insisted upon} but it is noteworthy how easily most persons have 
hitherto overlooked the fact that the rule is applicable even to the 
domestic pigeon as well as to other birds. 
With regard to the cherry-stones it seems not improbable that a 
certain comfort and satisfaction may be derived by the birds from 
the long-continued distention of their organs of digestion by this 
very bulky material, and this may perhaps have been the incentive 
which led the birds to accustom themselves to a diet apparently so 
meagre. It was very noticeable, at all events, that the pigeons ob- 
served by me took particular pains to resort to a quiet nook where 
they were free from interruption while digesting this food ; so much 
so, indeed, that I frequently asked myself how these particular 
birds could possibly find time for the ordinary affairs of life. Dur- 
ing August and September, that is to say at the time when cherry- 
stones were to be had in abundance, the two birds often remained 
for hours in a state of quiescence so unusual that it was repeatedly 
* «¢ Jahrbiicher des Vereins fiir Naturkunde in Nassau,” 1857, Heft 12, p. 361. 
+ ‘‘ Proceedings Boston Society of Natural History,” 1866, 11, 24. 
t By no one, perhaps, more explicitly than Wm. Bartram in the introduc- 
tion (p. XXIII.) to his ‘‘ Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, 
Florida, &c,” London, 1792, when he asserts that ‘‘ animal-substance seems 
to be the first food of all birds, even the graniverous tribes.” 
