Weed Seeds.—­One hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail’s bill of fare.  Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass.  A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., had taken about ten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) In Bulletin No. 21, Biological Survey, it is calculated that if in Virginia and North Carolina there are four bob whites to every square mile, and each bird consumes one ounce of seed per day, the total destruction to weed seeds from September 1st to April 30th in those states alone will be 1,341 tons.

In 1910 Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology (Vol.  III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of “The Food of the Bob-White.”  It should be in every library in this land.  Mrs. Nice publishes the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail,—­and it looks like a rogue’s gallery.  Here is an astounding record, which proves once more that truth is stranger than fiction: 

* * * * *

NUMBER OF SEEDS EATEN BY A BOB-WHITE IN ONE DAY

Barnyard grass 2,500 Milkweed 770
Beggar ticks 1,400 Peppergrass 2,400
Black mustard 2,500 Pigweed 12,000
Burdock 600 Plantain 12,500
Crab grass 2,000 Rabbitsfoot clover 30,000
Curled dock 4,175 Round-headed bush clover 1,800
Dodder 1,560 Smartweed 2,250
Evening primrose 10,000 White vervain 18,750
Lamb’s quarter 15,000 Water smartweed 2,000

NOTABLY BAD INSECTS EATEN BY THE BOB-WHITE

(Prof.  Judd and Mrs. Nice.)

Colorado potato beetle
Cucumber beetle
Chinch bug
Bean-leaf beetle
Wireworm
May beetle
Corn billbug
Imbricated-snout beetle
Plant lice
Cabbage butterfly
Mosquito
Squash beetle
Clover leaf beetle
Cotton boll weevil
Cotton boll worm
Striped garden caterpillar
Cutworms
Grasshoppers
Corn-louse ants
Rocky Mountain locust
Codling moth
Canker worm
Hessian fly
Stable fly

SUMMARY OF THE QUAIL’S INSECT FOOD