28 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



my enthusiasm is all aroused, and pleasure or pain pre- 

 dominates as they venture near me or hold back in fear. 

 Birds are creatures by themselves, and have little in com- 

 mon with the elaborate laws of those naturalists who know 

 them only by the structure of their bodies and not by the 

 exhibition of an advanced intelligence ; which, indeed, is 

 persistently denied them. The scale of bodily structure is 

 one thing, that of intelligence quite another ; but all this 

 matters not at present. The layman can rest assured that 

 be a bird's brain wrinkled or smooth, large or small, it is 

 the seat of a quicker wit than many of our wild mam- 

 mals possess. 



These chattering jays were as deeply impressed with 

 the novelty of the surroundings as I was. They entered 

 heartily into the spirit of the white, wintry day, and played 

 what I may call a game of snow- showering. Flitting and 

 fluttering through the laden twigs, these joyous birds were 

 often lost in a cloud of whirling flakes, from which they 

 would emerge, screaming wildly their delight. 



Perhaps they made a virtue of necessity, and, being 

 too clumsy to alight without displacing the snow, turned 

 their awkwardness into sport. This explanation may be 

 correct as applied to indefinitely distant generations back, 

 but I do not think it applicable to the present time. The 

 jays along my hill-side evidently love fun as much as do 

 our children, and if they, furthermore, do not really 

 laugh, their hearty screams are at least closely akin to 

 laughter. 



It will doubtless be thought by many, if not by most 

 of my readers, that it is an overbold statement, but I do 

 not hesitate to say that I have long been convinced that 

 many of our birds and some of our mammals have a 

 fairly well developed sense of humor. Dr. Lindsay, in 

 his work on " Mind in the Lower Animals," states the 

 case as follows : " Certain animals, including species and 



