92 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 



the point. I applied to her, and, sitting by 

 her window, she discovered that jays do indeed 

 hoard food in a tentative, childish kind of way, 

 but not with the cunning and provident fore- 

 sight of the squirrels and native mice. She 

 saw a jay fly to the ground with what proved 

 to be a peanut in its beak and carefully cover 

 it up with leaves and grass. * ' The next fall, 

 looking out of my own window, I saw two jays 

 hiding chestnuts with the same blind instinct. 

 They brought them from a near tree and cov- 

 ered them up in the grass, putting but one in 

 a place. Subsequently, in another locality, I 

 saw jays similarly employed. It appears to be 

 simply the crow instinct to steal, or to carry 

 away and hide any superfluous morsel of food." 

 The jays were really planting chestnuts instead 

 of hoarding them. There was no possibility of 

 such supplies being available in winter, and in 

 spring a young tree might spring from each 

 nut. This fact doubtless furnishes a key to 

 the problem why a forest of pine is usually 

 succeeded by a forest of oak. The acorns are 

 planted by the jays. Their instinct for hiding 

 things prompts them to seek the more dark and 

 secluded pine woods with their booty, and the 

 thick layer of needles furnishes an admirable 

 material with which to cover the nut. The 

 germ sprouts and remains a low slender shoot 

 for years, or until the pine woods are cut away, 

 when it rapidly becomes a tree. 



My correspondent thinks the birds possess 

 some of the frailties of human beings; among 



