88 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



their corn, found it all eaten." Other ancient writers 

 record similar facts.'^ 



Two birds of North America, belonging to the 

 Woodpecker family, prepare their provisions for the 

 bad season with consummate art ; not only do they 

 harvest them and place them in shelter, but they 

 arrange them in such a manner that at the right 

 moment they can utilise them in the most convenient 

 manner. 



One of them which is common in California, the 

 Aldanerpcs formicivorus, nourishes himself, as his name 

 indicates, by insects, and especially ants. All the 

 summer he gives himself up to this hunt, but at the 

 same time he collects acorns, which he does not 

 touch, however, so long as he can find other food. 

 He amasses them in the following ingenious manner: 

 he chooses a tree and hollows out in its trunk a cavity 

 just capable of receiving one acorn. He then carries 

 a fruit and introduces it forcibly into the hole he 

 has just made. Thus buried, the acorn can neither 

 fall nor become the prey of another animal. In the 

 domain of these birds trees may be found which are 

 riddled like a sieve with holes stopped up by an 

 acorn as by a plug. When the hunting of insects 

 ceases to be fruitful, the Melanerpes visits his barns. 

 If an ordinary bird wished to eat one of these fruits, 

 at each stroke of his beak, on account of the polish 

 and convexity of the acorn's surface, it would escape 



• Zoologist, May 1893. It may be added that the Scottish Vole, 

 which was so destructive about the same time, does not burrow to a 

 depth like the Thessaly Vole, but lives in shallow runs amongst the 

 roots of herbage. Its exploits are recorded in a Report on the Plague 

 of Field-Mice in Scotland, made by a committee appointed by the 

 President of the Board of Agriculture, 1893. 



