go General Notes. \_\xn 



She would cling to the side of the cage and pry under this end with her 

 bill until she had raised the perch up out of the notch where it rested, 

 then, by a series of pushes with her bill, or by having one foot upon the 

 perch and the other upon the side of the cage, she would work it over 

 until it reached diagonally. to the corner of the cage. She could now 

 stand upon it and look out at the sparrows Of course she may have dis- 

 covered this by accident, but she went about it in such a methodical way 

 that she appeared to be thoroughly aware that in this way she could 

 accomplish her end. 



She also displayed another bit of intelligence — if I may call it such. I 

 had caged a male Cardinal with her. There was no assertion of authority 

 on the Cardinal's part — he gave in to her in everything. But with the 

 Cardinal came a new kind of food into the cage. I fed him a mixed seed, 

 a good portion of which was sunflower seeds. Now the blackbird's bill 

 was not strong enough to break the sunflower seed. She watched the Car- 

 dinal eat them, and she finally took the following method of procuring 

 them : 



The Cardinal would pick up a sunflower seed and start to crack it in his 

 bill. When he had cracked it several times, the blackbird would walk up 

 to him and seize it and she was then able to get at the contents with little 

 trouble. 



In obtaining these ends the blackbird seemed to show some instinctive 

 or mental faculty which, if not identical, is apparently very similar to the 

 reasoning powers of man. — Chreswell J. Hunt, 1306 N. 33rd St., Phil- 

 adelphia, Pa. 



Guthrie's Geography, 1815 Edition. — Some of the readers of ' The Auk ' 

 may be interested to know that a copy of the second volume of the 1815 

 edition of Guthrie's 'Geography' has recently come to light. This edi- 

 tion had become so rare that in 1S94 Mr. S. N. Rhoads issued a reprint of 

 the zoological matter contained therein, 1 and which, as was shown by 

 Mr. Rhoads, was prepared by Mr. George Ord expressly for this edition. 



The copv above referred to was found amongst a street-corner lot of old 

 books, composed for the most part of school books and modern editions 

 of travel, fiction, etc., and is in fairly good condition, seemingly complete 

 as to text and maps. Since Mr. Rhoads's reprint appeared, the copy 

 therein referred to as having been lost 1 from the library of the Philadel- 

 phia Academy of Natural Sciences has come to light and proves to be a 

 "separate " only of the zoological portion of Volume II. The copy now 

 noticed would appear to be the second known copy of this edition, which 

 is the only edition of the work containing the technical portion of the 

 Zoology. — C. J. Pennock, 8 Kennett Square, Pa. 



1 See ' The Auk' for January, 1895, an ^ April, \l 



