McCauley (1939:151) examined contents of 25 alimentary tracts of _E. fasciatus_ collected in Maryland as the basis for the most extensive account of the food habits yet published. One tract contained a broken _Eumeces_ tail, possibly that of the lizard that ate it, which had a recently broken stump tail. A half-grown skink contained numerous _Eumeces_ scales, and McCauley interpreted this as indicating that it had fed on another of its own species or of _E. laticeps_. As no other hard parts of the assumed victim were in evidence, these scales may have been the lizard's own slough. (In the present study it was found that eating of the slough was far more frequent than cannibalism.) Arthropod prey included: 11 orthopterans (4 undetermined, 3 unspecified grasshoppers, 2 gryllids, 1 blattid, 1 acridid); 10 coleopterans (7 undetermined, 1 each of rhynchophoran, cerambycid, carabid, staphylinid larva, elaterid adult and larva); 8 spiders; 5 pulmonate snails; 5 flies; 3 undetermined; and one each of lepidopteran larva and adult, ant, dragonfly, thysanuran, and sow bug. In Ohio, Conant (1940:31) noted food items consisting largely of grasshopper nymphs and small beetles. He found that in captivity these skinks would eat mealworms, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, roaches, and newborn mice, and a few individuals would lap egg from a mixture of chopped meat and eggs. One large male killed and ate a small common swift (_Sceloporus undulatus_). Netting (1939:162) mentioned newborn mice, birds' eggs and small lizards as possible prey, although stating that this species is mainly insectivorous. Taylor (1936:61) describing the feeding habits of lizards of this genus wrote: "The food consists of a very extensive variety of insects and insect larvae, Arachnida and occasionally small crustaceans. In a few specimens traces of plant material have been observed, but I regard this as being most probably of accidental introduction in the diet. Probably the most surprising fact about the diet of the forms examined is that ants are absent." In the present study of _E. fasciatus_, the trends in general bore out Taylor's findings concerning absence of ants from the diet, although three ants were found among more than 600 other food items. These three, one of them a larva, were of the two largest species among the many kinds of ants found in the area of the study. Most of these local kinds of ants are below the minimum size of prey ordinarily taken by the skinks. Colonies of small ants, _Aphenogaster_ sp., for instance, are abundant in the soil beneath flat rocks in the same situations where the skinks are found, and constitute most of the food of the small toads, _Microhyla olivacea_, which were abundant in the same habitat and microhabitat as the skinks, especially in the Skink Woods study area (Freiburg, 1951:383).