714 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol XV 



under the tree, and closely watched the bird at work, boring into the nuts, first 

 perforating the outer skin— an easy task — and then the hard, fully formed shell 

 of the nut itself — a very different matter. 



I secured some of the nuts, and found that the whole of the kernel had been 

 eaten away by the bird. A large hole, sometimes nearly the size of one side of 

 the nut, had been made, and the contents neatly scooped out. 



I was at first under the impression that the attacks were made in search of 

 some insect, but examination of nuts on which attacks had been commenced 

 disproved this, for the bird had certainly excavated for the contents of the nut 

 itself. 



When I had made theso observations, I gathered the nuts which survived, and 

 found them all good, though rather small fruit, with very hard shells. I saw 

 the same thing happen to the same tree in 1902." 



Now we have seen from Mr. Carroll's note that the lesser spotted wood- 

 pecker is a great destroyer of wild walnuts, and, for further light upon this 

 point, I extract the following from " Dr. Schlich's Manual of Forestry," Vol. 4, 

 page 128, where the learned doctor discourses on the damage done by wood- 

 peckers to trees and seeds. 



He says Dendrocopus major, alone of the woodpeckers, eats large quantities, 

 of coniferous seeds. It wedges the cones which it has plucked in a cleft of the 

 bark or in an angle between a stem and a branch, opens them out, and 

 removes the seeds with its bill. One can distinguish between the action of the 

 crossbill and the woodpecker in this respect. Frequently the ground under a 

 tree is covered with opened out cones. Also v:alnuts, hazelnuts, acorns, and 

 other fruits are eaten by the great woodpecker. 



Here we have the valuable testimony of two very competent witnesses, both 

 of them foresters, to the fact that the spotted woodpeckers, both great and 

 small, find no difficulty whatever in extracting the kernels from walnuts. 

 How much easier then must it be for the Himalayan nutcracker to do the 

 same thing, he being a much larger and very much more powerful bird, with a 

 bill built like that of the woodpecker, but much stronger in every way. 



In connection with all these points, it is interesting to note that if you dissect 

 the eye of a woodpecker, you will find that the sclerotic coat (in which is en- 

 closed the soft portions of the eye, such as the crystaline lens, iris, vitreous 

 humour, &c.) is very much stronger, thicker, more cartilaginous, and more 

 absolutely horny than the sclerotic of any of the insect-eating, grain-eating or 

 fruit-eating birds. This extra strong construction of the eye of the genus 

 picus is to protect its semi-fluid contents from being jarred and very possibly 

 displaced by the shocks to which the head of the bird is subjected when the 

 woodpecker is hammering away with its bill at the hard bark or wood of a 

 tree. 



Dissect the eye of a Himalayan nutcracker, and you will find the sclerotic 

 coal similarly specialized, this formation being doubtless a provision of nature 

 as in the case of the wooilpeokers, to protect the eye of the bird from damage 



