The vegetable food consists of grain, weed, and other hard seeds. Grain in general amounts to 14, and weed and other seeds to 12 per cent. The grain, principally corn, is mostly eaten in winter and early spring, and must be therefore simply waste kernels; only a trifle is consumed in summer and autumn, when it is most plentiful. No trace of sprouting grain was discovered. Clover seed was found in only six stomachs, and but little in each. Seeds of weeds, principally ragweed, barn grass, and smartweed, are eaten from November to April, inclusive, but during the rest of the year are replaced by insects. Briefly stated, more than half of the meadow lark's food consists of harmful insects; its vegetable food is composed either of noxious weeds or waste grain, and the remainder is made up of useful beetles or neutral insects and spiders. A strong point in the bird's favor is that, although naturally an insect eater, it is able to subsist on vegetable food, and consequently is not forced to migrate in cold weather any farther than is necessary to find ground free from snow. This explains why it remains for the most part in the United States during winter, and moves northward as soon as the snow disappears from its usual haunts. There is one danger to which the meadow lark is exposed. As its flesh is highly esteemed the bird is often shot for the table, but it is entitled to all possible protection, and to slaughter it for game is the least profitable way to utilize this valuable species. THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE. (_Icterus galbula._) Brilliancy of plumage, sweetness of song, and food habits to which no exception can be taken are some of the striking characteristics of the Baltimore oriole (fig. 12). In summer this species is found throughout the northern half of the United States east of the Great Plains, and is welcomed and loved in every country home in that broad land. In the Northern States it arrives rather late, and is usually first seen, or heard, foraging amidst the early bloom of the apple trees, where it searches for caterpillars or feeds daintily on the surplus blossoms. Its nest commands hardly less admiration than the beauty of its plumage or the excellence of its song. Hanging from the tip of the outermost bough of a stately elm, it is almost inaccessible, and so strongly fastened as to bid defiance to the elements.