Ned looked round him as he spoke, with a glow of enthusiasm that neither badinage nor philosophy could check.
“Just look around thee,” he continued; “open thine ears, Tom, to the music of yon cataract, and expand thy nostrils to the wild perfume of these pines.”
“I wouldn’t, at this moment,” quietly remarked Tom, “exchange for it the perfume of that venison steak, of which I pray thee to be more regardful, else thou’lt upset it into the fire.”
“Oh! Tom—incorrigible!”
“Not at all, Ned. While you flatter yourself that you have all the enthusiastic study of nature to yourself, here have I succeeded, within the last few minutes, in solving a problem in natural history which has puzzled my brains for weeks past.”
“And, pray thee, what may that be, most sapient philosopher?”
“Do you see yonder bird clinging to the stem of that tree, and pitching into it as if it were its most deadly foe?”
“I do—a woodpecker it is.”
“Well,” continued Tom, sitting down before his portion of the venison steak, “that bird has cleared up two points in natural history, which have, up till this time, been a mystery to me. The one was, why woodpeckers should spend their time in pecking the trees so incessantly; the other was, how it happened that several trees I have cut down could have had so many little holes bored in their trunks, and an acorn neatly inserted into each. Now that little bird has settled the question for me. I caught him in the act not ten minutes ago. He flew to that tree with an acorn in his beak, tried to insert it into a hole, which didn’t fit, being too small; so he tried another, which did fit, poked the nut in, small end first, and tapped it scientifically home. Now, why did he do it? That’s the question.”
“Because he wanted to, probably,” remarked Ned; “and very likely he lays up a store of food for winter in this manner.”