188 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
cutters, have many superstitions with regard to this bird, and 
tell some droll stories of its humors and feats. It is said, 
among other things, to drive off or exterminate our hero, the 
Blue Jay, before very long, wherever it makes its appearance. 
There is a more delicate and beautiful variety than either 
of them, and better behaved too, by the way ; for it pos- 
sesses, among other accomplishments, some very sweet notes. 
It belongs to the extreme South, and is not found north of 
Louisiana. There is also yet another, a more beautiful va- 
riety still, which has lately been discovered in California, 
Gyanocomx Luxuosus. 
The Blue Jay has many of the traits of the Magpie, and, 
like him, possesses an inveterate propensity for hiding every- 
thing he can lay hold of in the shape of food. The Magpie 
hides things that are of no value, as well ; but our Jay is in 
every respect a utilitarian, and when, after feeding to reple- 
tion, he is seen to busy himself for hours in sticking an acorn 
here, or a beach-nut there, in a knot-hole, or wedging snails 
between the splinters of some lightning-shivered trunk, or 
making deposits beneath the sides of decaying logs, natural- 
ists wonder what he is doing it for. But our Euphuist knows 
well enough, and you may rest assured, if you see him along 
that way next winter, as you will be apt to, if you watch, 
you will find that he has not forgotten the place of one sin- 
gle deposit ; and that, with a shrewder economy than the 
Ant or the Squirrel, instead of heaping up his winter store 
in one granary, where a single accident may deprive him of 
all, he has scattered them here and there, in a thousand dif- 
ferent spots, the record of which is kept in his own memory ; 
so that it cannot be denied, whatever may be said of his 
thieving and other dubious propensities, that the Blue Jay 
is a decidedly sagacious personage — so far as a pains-taking 
care of that No. one, of which we have found him 
to be so desperately smitten, is concerned. There is 
also a variety of the Wood-pecker in California, Melan- 
erpes formicivorus (Swains)^ which carries this propensity 
