82 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
and, an inch or two higher on the same side of the trunk, was 
another cutting made evidently for the same purpose. At the 
base of the trunk, and on the same side of it, thirty-eight fir- 
cones belonging not to the Scotch fir but to the spruce—as did 
also the one imbedded—lay strewed in a half circle, the outlying 
cones on each side reaching, together, to about half-way round 
the tree, and, directly under the two grooves in the bark, was a 
litter of the dust and ‘‘leaves”’ of fir-cones. Looking amongst 
this, I found what, from previous experience, I knew to be the 
droppings of a Woodpecker (no doubt Dendrocopus major), and 
instantly thought of the Californian species which studs a tree- 
trunk with acorns, and, extremely interested in what looked like 
an earlier stage in the evolution of the habit, I concealed myself 
at some little distance from the stump in question, and waited 
in the somewhat forlorn hope that the Woodpecker, if it really 
were one, would return to its hoard. I sat on for some hours, 
but nothing broke the lifeless stillness of the island. Meanwhile, 
however, I had noticed another Scotch fir quite near me, at 
whose base lay a very much larger heap of cones—also of the 
spruce—and, upon going up to it, found that its bark had been 
treated in just the same way. Here there were three groovings, 
two of the same general shape as the others, and each of these 
held firmly almost any cone of the heap that I picked up, though 
one was a good deal longer than any of them—which, however, 
though it made the shape less exact, did not at all affect the 
firmness of the fit. The third mould was smaller and more 
rounded, and appeared to be adapted for a smaller cone. This, 
however, as I soon found, was a wrong conclusion, for a little 
later I came upon a tree from which a cone projected outwards, 
as well as upwards, in a very striking manner. But for the 
bizarre outline thus presented, which at once caught my eye, I 
should probably have passed this tree, as there were but few cones 
beneath it, and these only strewn about, not forming a heap. 
This was also the case with regard to a fourth tree, in which, like 
the first, a cone was similarly inserted in a socket which just 
fitted it. I cannot now remember whether there was another 
empty one, and if so whether it was rounded or elongate, but on 
going back to the tree in which I had first noticed the latter kind 
of groove, and trying a cone in it, after the fashion of the pro- 
