Oh, fury! he sees the bushes bend-he hears the bounding crash-too late! The deer has turned upon its trackhe heard the alarm.

Our hunter may be a philosopher, but most likely his ball will be sent along with his curse, after the Jay, who, with impish clamors, flies off through the echoing woods in scatheless glee.

This is not, by any means, the only joke our friend manages to perpetrate upon those whose pursuits carry them into the fastnesses of his haunts. The pine-log cutters at the North know him well, and bestow upon him many a blessing from the wrong side of the mouth. The deep snow is raked away, and the camp is pitched beneath the gloomy shelter of the heavy pines-scarcely has the odor of the first roast steamed through the rare air, and freighted every biting wind, when, with hungry cries, from every side, the Jays come gathering in. But here our particular acquaintance, the Blue Jay, with all his blustering and obstreperous vanity, is obliged to play second fiddle to his cousin-german and master, the Canada Jay, who not only drubs him soundly when they meet, but, on occasion, even makes a meal of him. They swarm about the camp in hundreds, and, such is their audacity when hard pinched with hunger, that they are frequently seen to dash at the meat roasting before the fire, and hot as it is, bear pieces off till they can cool it in the snow. They are regarded with singular aversion by these hardy men; for, take what precautions they may, they are often robbed to such serious extent by these persevering depredators, as to be reduced to suffering. They dare not leave any article that can be carried off within their reach. When they kill game and leave it hung up until the hunt is over, the Jays assemble in hundreds, and frequently tear it in pieces before their return.

The plumage of the Canada Jay is very curious, and some of its notes are the strangest and most peculiar sounds to be heard in our forests. The northern hunter, log-drivers and

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 possesses, 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 variety still, which has lately been discovered in California, Cyanocorax Luxuosus.

The Blue Jay has many of the traits of the Magpie, and, like him, possesses an inveterate propensity for hiding everything 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 repletion, 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, naturalists 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 single 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, Melanerpes formicivorus (Swains), which carries this propensity

to an extraordinary extreme. It bores innumerable little holes in the bark and trunks of trees, in each of which it wedges firmly an acorn with its bill. They may be heard hammering away at this work the live-long day. The whole family of squirrels-all the burrowing animals together, with many other birds besides those enumerated, have this same propensity for hiding their food in the ground or elsewhere. It is thus preserved from decay, and whether used by the creature depositing them or not, they grow into trees and renew the earth with vegetation.

Thus do these little creatures, in the economy of nature, become the planters of our forests.

So universal is the Blue Jay's reputation for mischievous and impish tricks of every kind, that the negroes of the South regard them with a strange mixture of superstition and deadly hate. The belief among them is, that it is the special agent of the devil here on earth-carries tales to him and all kinds of slanderous gossip, particularly about negroes, and most especially that they supply him with fuel to burn them with. Their animosity is entirely genuine and implacable.

When a boy, I caught many of them in traps, during the snows, and the negro boys who generally accompanied me on my rounds to the traps, always begged eagerly for the Jay Birds we captured to be surrendered to them, and the next instant their necks were wrung amid the shouts of laughter.

Alas, for the fate of our feathered Euphuist!-yet he was "a fellow of infinite wit !"

CHAPTER IX.

MY PET WOOD THRUSHES.

I Do not wonder that the world is full of superstition, and that men talk vaguely, as if they were in a dream of the

"Angels and ministers of grace"

belonging to another sphere, when they know so little of the divine realities of this!

How many of them, for instance, know anything of the Thrush-that present angel of the solemn woods? I venture, there are not ten men out of a thousand, that call themselves intelligent, who can go into the woods with you of a summer morning, and point out which is the Wood Thrush, or tell you, amidst the choir, which strain belongs to it. They may notice the right bird, but be sure they do not know it as the Wood Thrush; and they will give you some other name—as Wood Robin, Ground Nightingale, &c.; but even then, they will seldom fail to identify the notes for you --and yet they have been hearing them-unless they've lived in cities-all their live-long days, and feeling them too, if they have any souls to feel with. It is one of the most common song-birds we have in our woods-is, literally, what Wordsworth calls the little English Robin,

-a joy,

A presence like the air!

and yet I believe there is less correctly and generally known

of it, than of almost any other bird within the limits of settlement on the Continent. Now, the question, why is this? admits of many a sage answer; but I say it is simply because men have sold "their birth-right for the mess of pottage." They were born with the gift to know their angels, but, in their progressive obesity, they are worse than Abraham of old, and seldom make the mistake of entertaining them even in disguise. The clear seraphic vision of childhood, which once could see the halo and the folded wings, stares now through the dim medium of worldly grease and dust, upon what may seem a mystery or a monster. We are born in God and nature, and so long as we remain unvitiated, there is no such thing as mystery and fear-for love is our pure enlightener, and faith maketh sport of fear-but, as the world wags, the same child that could smile in confiding wonder amidst the rock of elemental war, and toy with the very bolts of heaven, as with its own rattle, would, as a man, tremble at a moon-thrown shadow, or faint if a donkey should bray of a sudden in the dark. The farther from birth the farther from nature, is almost a truism, and to the rheumy vision of age we owe the ghostly forms of superstition. As men become more and more besotted in the worship of the golden calf they have formed to themselves, so do the realities of beauty and harmony about them become as common and unclean-they cannot see them, neither can they hearand then with dim and morbid yearnings for more exalted communion, they turn to the shadow realm of sickly dream, and "call up spirits from the vasty deep" of superstition, to minister to their craven appetites, and bring them the empty visions of a servile bliss. With the best of us, those voices which spoke to our young sense in lofty themes have lost their meaning, and now they seem wise indeed in their day and generation who can invoke even the echoes of that innocent time, and name them by holy names-their comforters!

Who knows the little Wood Thrush for a comforter?and yet, ye children of mammon, it was the first sweet singer