THE SENSE OF SMELL IN BIRDS. 371 



there to till their crops decently in a season of want and famine. 

 Every afternoon I used to go to renew the provision, when one day I 

 was surprised by the noise of five partridges whom my coming bid 

 scared away from the grain. The (juestion which at once puzzled me 

 was how they had e\'er discovered it. 



It was certainly the first time they had come; foi- I should not 

 have failed to remark their footprints, as I saw them at that moment 

 all about th«> place where grain had been scattered. Following their 

 traces, plainly marked in the snow, all along their path back to the 

 hedge of the inclosure, I found they had conui straight from the tilled 

 fields. They had, therefore, been attracted to this very point, and 

 nothing but its sinell could have revealed the presence of this food, 

 which they could not have expected to find tit a time when they were 

 reduced to seeking under the crusted snow for leaves of wheat or rye. 



Every other hypoth(\sis was excluded; for if chance had brought 

 them to the place, they would not have followed so straight a path. 

 Sight could not have guided them, since in order to see that there was 

 grain they nmst have flown directl}^ over the little opening, which 

 was closely sheltered by trees; and to fly that way would be to fly 

 straight toward a cluster of houses. Resides, if they had seen the grain 

 in that way, instead of fl3'ing bju-k to the field to return to it on foot, 

 they would simply have lit close by. They had, then, scented the grain 

 while they were in the tilled field seeking for possible food. 



TomUtH { /■*aru-'< major) are particularly fond of Swiss cheese. Now, 

 in their wild condition they can so seldom find it that most of them can 

 hav(; nev(M" tiisted it. and consequently it can only be its smell that 

 attracts them to it. I first found this out in a wa}^ as unfortunate as it 

 was unexpected. 



For a long time I had used Swiss cheese to bait traps intended to 

 destroy nianiuding cats, as well as those other nocturnal mah^f actors, 

 the hedgehogs. The latter destroy the ground nests even of the pheas- 

 ants and partridges — nests not so likely to be found b}' cats Ixecause of 

 their dislike for walking in dewy grass or other crops. Now, I had 

 often found this bait gnawed by some animal — as I supposed, by a 

 field mouse — when, one morning, the trap having snapped. I found 

 under its striking part a crushed titmouse, a victim of imprudent 

 assaults upon the bait of a feather-triggered trap that brings down a 

 load of about 90 pounds. After that, to avoid destroying so valuable 

 an insect eater, I used, especially at the setting season, as it happened 

 then to l)e, to uncock the trap at dawn and take away the stick with 

 the Swiss cheese. 



Last year,' contrary to custom, no tomtit nested in my place. From 

 the beginning of spring I had not seen one of these birds. Conse- 



'See "La diminutior des Oiseaux en 1897," in La Feuille des jeunes naturalistes, 

 for December, 1897. 



