58 HARD FARE. 



A lady writing to me from Iowa, says : " I must 

 tell you what I saw a blue jay do last winter. Flying 

 down to the ground in front of the house, he put 

 something in the dead grass, drawing the grass over 

 it, first on one side, then on the other, tramped it 

 down just exactly as a squirrel would, then walked 

 around the spot, examining it to see if it was satisfac- 

 tory. After he had flown away, I went out to see 

 what he had hidden ; it was a nicely shucked peanut 

 that he had laid up for a time of scarcity." Since 

 then I have myself made similar observations. I 

 have several times seen jays carry off chestnuts and 

 hide them here and there upon the ground. They 

 put only one in a place, and covered it up with grass 

 or leaves. Instead, therefore, of hoarding up nuts for 

 future use, when the jay carries them off, he is really 

 planting them. When the snows come these nuts are 

 lost to him, even if he remembered the hundreds of 

 places where he had dropped them. May not this fact 

 account in a measure for the oak and chestnut trees 

 that spring up where a pine forest has been cleared 

 from the ground ? Probably the crows secrete nuts 

 in the same way. The acorns at least germinate and 

 remain small insignificant shoots until the pine is cut 

 away and they have a chance. In almost any pine 

 wood these baby oaks may be seen scattered here and 

 there. Jays will carry off and secrete corn in the 

 same way. One winter I put out ears of corn near 

 my study window to attract these birds. They were 

 not long in finding them out, nor long in stripping 



