148 IN THE MIDDLE COUNTRY. 



sumably eating the eggs or young of the English 

 sparrow, but the hundred or two who raised 

 their broods and squawked from morning to 

 night in the immediate vicinity of the pine-tree 

 household never intimated that they were dis- 

 turbed, and never showed hostility to their 

 neighbors in blue. Moreover, there is undoubt- 

 edly something to be said on the jay's side. 

 Even if he does indulge in these little eccen- 

 tricities, what is he but a "collector"? And 

 though he does not claim to be working " in the 

 interest of science," which bigger collectors in- 

 variably do, he is working in the interest of 

 life, and life is more than science. Even a blue 

 jay's life is to him as precious as ours to us, 

 and who shall say that it is not as useful as 

 many of ours in the great plan ? 



The only indications of hostilities that I ob- 

 served in four weeks' close study, at the most 

 aggressive time of bird life, nesting-time, I shall 

 relate exactly as I saw them, and the record will 

 be found a very modest one. In this case, cer- 

 tainly, the jay was no more offensive than the 

 meekest bird that has a nest to defend, and far 

 less belligerent than robins and many others. 

 On one occasion a strange blue jay flew up to 

 the nest in the pine. I could not discover that 

 he had any evil intention, except just to see 

 what was going on, but one of the pair flew at 



