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 | Clover leaf beetle |
| Cucumber beetle | Cotton boll weevil |
| Chinch bug | Cotton boll worm |
| Bean-leaf beetle | Striped garden caterpillar |
| Wireworm | Cutworms |
| May beetle | Grasshoppers |
| Corn billbug | Corn-louse ants |
| Imbricated-snout beetle | Rocky Mountain locust |
| Plant lice | Codling moth |
| Cabbage butterfly | Canker worm |
| Mosquito | Hessian fly |
| Squash beetle | Stable fly |
| Summary Of The Quail'S Insect Food |
| Orthoptera—Grasshoppers and locusts | 13 | species. |
| Hemiptera—Bugs | 24 | " |
| Homoptera—Leaf hoppers and plant lice | 6 | " |
| Lepidoptera—Moths, caterpillars, cut-worms, etc | 19 | " |
| Diptera—Flies | 8 | " |
| Coleoptera—Beetles | 61 | " |
| Hymenoptera—Ants, wasps, slugs | 8 | " |
| Other insects | 6 | " |
| | --- |
| Total | 145 | " |
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THE BOB-WHITE
For the Smaller Pests of the Farm, This Bird is the Most Marvelous Engine of Destruction Ever put Together of Flesh and Blood.
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A few sample meals of insects.—The following are records of single individual meals of the bob white: