270 The Unity of the Organism 



many of them containing acorns. 



But even were it certain that the acorns are utilized in any 

 manner and to some extent in connection with the feeding 

 function, there are still other evidences than that just ad- 

 duced of the imperfect and excessive operation of the acorn- 

 storing instinct. As is well- known, the bird sometimes ex- 

 tends its drilling operations to wooden buildings to the ex- 

 tent of making itself a great nuisance. I have seen a case 

 where the birds had pierced the rustic of an uninhabited 

 house, so that when the acorns were inserted, instead of 

 filling the puncture as they would fill holes in a tree, they 

 would drop down into the space between the rustic and the 

 inner wall. Apparently the failure to stop the hole, and 

 failure also to perceive why, or to recognize that the hole 

 could not thus be stopped, "fooled" the birds into putting 

 one acorn after another into the same hole, endlessly almost, 

 judging by the great quantity of nuts piled up at the bot- 

 tom of the space. 



While the storing habit of the California woodpecker is 

 undoubtedly exceptional as to extent, it is by no means 

 wholly unique. At least one species of blue- jay (Cyanocitta 

 cristata) has much the same habit, in the opinion of most 

 ornithologists who have studied the habits of the bird. An 

 experienced naturalist, E. H. Forbush, has recently said 

 concerning Mark Twain's "Baker's Blue Jay Yarn," in A 

 Tramp Abroad, "All of this is not merely amusing; it is good 

 ornithology in so far as it reports the way a Jay acts." ^^ 

 This story, it may be said for the benefit of any reader so 

 unfortunate as not to know it, turns upon the performance 

 of a jay similar to that narrated above about the California 

 woodpecker, the acorns, and the old house. 



The habit of the shrikes (genus Lanius) of impaling their 

 victims and leaving them, almost certainly operates more or 

 less independently of, and often in excess of, the food re- 

 quirements of the birds. ''My observations," says Forbush, 



