JAY—NUTCRA CKER 



109 



we may divide the nutcrackers into two races — the thin-beaked form indigenous 

 to northern and north-eastern Asia, and the thick-beaked variety breeding in 

 Em-ope. Regarding these two forms as local phases of a single species, we may say 

 that the nutcracker ranges over temperate and northern Europe and Asia to the 

 middle of Scandinavia and Kamchatka. It is an occasional visitor to England, 

 and not unknown in Japan. It is frequently seen in the Apennines and the 



THE NUTCRACKER. 



Alps, but has become rare in the Black Forest, where it is found only in the old 

 pine-woods near Wildbad. Very rare in most parts of Germany, it nests in East 

 Prussia, where, if pine-cones are not abundant in any particular season, the 

 nutcracker promptly migrates to southern German)-, Switzerland, the south of 

 France, and the countries watered by the Danube, or to southern Russia and 

 central Asia. Sometimes it appears only after an interval of two or three years, 

 but in Siberia and the Tyrol it may frequently be seen in thousands which seek 

 these pine-seeds wherever they are to be found, and even high up on the mountains 



