HABIT OF GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. 91 
be detected. Some of the trees, for instance, which had been 
put to this purpose had not one niche only, but two or more 
close to each other. Moreover, the blindness of any instinct 
may show itself in various ways—for instance, where Melanerpes 
has come to place many acorns in as many holes, Dendrocopus 
may be getting to place an unnecessary number of cones, in 
accelerated succession, in one and the same hole. As to this, I 
noticed that many of the cones which the bird I watched had 
scattered about beneath its tree had been very slightly pecked, 
and also that though to fetch another cone was the inspiring 
motive of every little journey it made into trees near about, 
yet sometimes it would come back without one, as though the 
recollection of a cone left unfinished had suddenly crossed its 
mind. It would then go on pecking at the cone it had left, 
which, as a rule, was thrown out only when it returned with a 
fresh one. Many cones having just the size and appearance of 
those habitually chosen by the bird were intact, but I could not 
be perfectly sure that these did not lie as they had fallen them- 
selves. This could not be the case, however, where transported 
cones of the spruce lay beneath a Scotch fir that the bird had 
worked upon, and a certain number of these showed no signs of 
having been pecked, which was, moreover, only slightly the case 
with some still sticking in the niches. These facts offer, perhaps, 
some slight evidence that something irrational or non-purposive 
may have begun to mingle with the habit or instinct, even in the 
HKuropean species. In conclusion, I would suggest that the best 
way of properly understanding very developed habits in one 
species is to study less developed ones, of a similar character, in 
another species. 
I have mentioned the small—but by no means minute— white 
grubs which I found living within some of the cones. In these, 
instead of in the seeds, we may perhaps see the Woodpecker’s 
original object in pecking open the cone. I found these, how- 
ever, in the spruce- and not, as far as I recollect, in the Scotch 
fir-cones, and if they, or some other creature, do not inhabit the 
latter, this explanation will not serve. Yet it is unlikely that, 
when the cones of one fir are inhabited, those of another should 
not be. 
