230 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



of mind, and soon discovers the location of a camp in the woods and 

 immediately pays a visit of inspection, and if permitted to gather up 

 the scraps from the table soon becomes very familiar. Where I was 

 staying, a fat, lazy dog was the rightful heir of all the table scraps, but 

 Mr. Nut-cracker was so thoroughly alert and swift in action, that poor 

 •doggie would scarcely begin to wag his tail in anticipation of dinner 

 -when the scraps would be snatched from his very jaws and spirited 

 away by his aeriel enemy. 



The plunge from a tree top to the ground when making these predi- 

 tory excursions was something astounding to behold. Hugging tight 

 their stout bodies with their powerful wings, they would pitch, like a 

 diver, headlong downward, arresting the lightning plunge within a 

 few feet of the earth, with such suddenness as to produce a loud ex- 

 plosive noise. 



Although they love to live in the cool retreats of the spruce forests 

 girting the crest of the mountains, where every night in the summer 

 season the waters of the laughing streams are congealed by the touch 

 of the Frost King's breath, they ardently seek the kiss of the first rays 

 of the morning sun as they gild the peaks with glory and thoroughly 

 warm up before starting out on the days round in search of their daily 

 bread, which consists of berries, seeds, all kinds of insects and mice. I 

 watched one of these fellows devour a mouse one day. He commenced 

 by picking out the eyes, then the brain, and proceeded until nothing 

 but the tail remained which was discarded. 



Their solitude breaking note, Kar'r'r'r! emitted with vigorous 

 enthusiasm, once heard is never forgotten. They are a busy industri- 

 ous bird, and there are no tramps in their family. 



Personal observation leads me to believe that the Nut-cracker does 

 not stand confinement well and this is strange when we consider how 

 readily nearly all members of the Crow family adapt themselves to 

 cage life. Their ability to tear into pieces the hard pine-cone, when 

 seeking for the much loved pine-nuts, evidences the strength of their 

 powerful beaks. 



One of these birds which I had in a cage for several months, would 

 easily twist off an iron wire l-32nd inch in diameter. The cut repro- 

 duced from one of a number of photographs taken by the author, shows 

 the crow in one of his most characteristic attitudes on the top of a sil- 

 ver spruce tree. That picture represents about a week's work, and 

 the expenditure of enough patience to supply an ordinary house-hold 



for months! 



Dr. William W. Arnold. 



