190 THE BLUE JAY. 



settler, if there was one, or to other places where in 

 sect food abounded. During my vigils in the wooded 

 creeks I observed that if there was a patch of corn to be 

 found within morning's flight, there were sure to congre 

 gate a number of blue jays, in all probability not stealing 

 from the crop, but doing a service, in such instances, and 

 in England in other birds, too often misappreciated, by 

 devouring the insidious insects that were unseen by man, 

 and which but for the birds would have worked him ill. 

 When the blue jays are thus seeking or returning from 

 their feeding-places, they fly very steadily, and often very 

 high, offering the prettiest overhead shots imaginable. In 

 some of the States there is a penalty attached to those 

 who kill them, arising from the fact of the general 

 destruction of the feathered creation around cultivated 

 lands, through the unlimited use of the gun, and the 

 consequent increase of noxious insects. This protecting 

 penalty is in this instance, however, in my opinion, an 

 error, for though the blue jay no doubt destroys his 

 quota of injurious insects, still, by the nature of the jay 

 and the predatory habits of his class, by killing the 

 young of smaller birds and sucking their eggs he ought 

 to be regarded as a creature whose numbers had better 

 be kept under, than protected for the purposes of further 

 incubation. 



The only way in which I can account for the general 

 presence of the English rabbit, and yet their paucity of 

 numbers, throughout the plains and woods wherein I 

 travelled, is by supposing that they have so many 

 enemies in the shape of wolves, foxes, skunks, coons, 

 snakes, &c., that they are destroyed to an extent above 

 their natural fecundity ; for unless this is so, a soil so 

 easily burrowed into, with the natural clefts in rocks, 



