20 IN BIRD LAND. 
aplomb, apparently, as a fly creeping up the smooth 
surface of a window-pane! Then he flew ahead a 
short distance, and began mounting the cliff where 
its face was quite smooth and hard. Presently he 
encountered a bulging protuberance, and tried to 
creep along the oblique under side of it; but 
that feat proved to be beyond his skill, agile as he 
was, and so he abandoned the attempt, and swung 
away to another part of the vertical wall. I have 
never seen, in any of the manuals which I have con- 
sulted, a description of a similar performance ; and 
if any of my readers have ever witnessed such a 
“coruscation’”’ of creeper genius, I should be glad 
to hear from them. 
In one’s out-of-the-way saunterings, one dashes 
up against many a faunal problem that defies, even 
while it challenges, solution. On a cold day of 
early winter I was strolling along the bare, wind- 
swept banks of a river, keeping my eyes alert, as 
usual, for bird curios. In the small bushes that 
fringed the bank were some cunningly placed nests. 
In the bottom of one of them lay many seeds of 
dogwood berries, with the kernels bored out, — the 
work, no doubt, of the crested tits. But there were 
no dogwood-trees within twenty-five rods of the 
place! Why had the birds carried the shells to this 
nest, and dropped them into it? ‘This is all the 
more curious because it was not a tit’s nest, but 
very likely a cat-bird’s. One can only surmise that 
the tits had gathered these seeds in the fall, and 
stowed them away in the nest for winter use, and 
