art, now sweeping
low over the grass, then mounting higher to pass over the shrubs that
defined it. A hundred feet or more the chase continued, and then the
smaller bird dropped into a low bush, and the larger one passed on.

Then lonely, with empty cage and a happy heart-ache, his friend turned
away and left the beautiful bird to his fate, assured that he was well
able to supply his needs and to protect himself--in a word, to be
free.

A BIRD OF AFFAIRS.

But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant sound of waters,
All things that love the sun are out of doors.

WORDSWORTH.

X.

A BIRD OF AFFAIRS.

One of the most interesting birds I have studied was a blue-jay; I may
say is, for he stands at this moment not six feet from me, his whole
mind intent upon the business of driving small corks through a hole
which they snugly fit. He takes the cork, as he does everything,
lengthwise, and turns it about till he gets the smaller end outside;
then pushes it into the hole and pounds it, delivering straight and
rapid strokes with his iron beak, till it is not only driven up to the
head, but, since he has found out that he can do so, till it drops out
on the other side, when, after an interested glance to see where it has
fallen, he instantly goes to the floor for another, and repeats the
performance. Hammering, indeed, is one of his chief pleasures, and no
woodpecker, whose special mission it is supposed to be, can excel him;
in excitement, in anger, when suffering from _ennui_ or from
embarrassment, he always resorts to that exercise to relieve his
feelings. I have thought sometimes he did it to hear the noise and to
amuse himself, in which case it might be called drumming.

Not only does my bird occupy himself with corks, but with perches and
the woodwork of his cage, with so great success that the former have to
be frequently renewed, and the latter looks as though rats had nibbled
it. The deliberate way in which he goes to work to destroy his cage is
amusing, lifting the end of a perch and quietly throwing it to the
floor, or pounding and splitting off a big splinter of the soft pine and
carefully hiding it. To give him liberty, as I have, is simply to
enlarge the field of his labors, and furnish him congenial employment
from morning to night, the happiest and busiest member of the household.
H