with difficulty extracted. Thus, the bark of a large pine forty or fifty feet high will present the appearance of being closely studded with brass nails, the heads only being visible. These acorns are thus stored in large quantities, and serve not only the Woodpecker, but trespassers as well. Dr. Heermann speaks of the nest as being excavated in the body of the tree to a depth varying from six inches to two feet, the eggs being four or five in number, and pure white.
These very remarkable and, for a Woodpecker, somewhat anomalous habits, first mentioned among American writers by Dr. Heermann, have given rise to various conflicting statements and theories in regard to the design of these collections of acorns. Some have even ventured to discredit the facts, but these are too well authenticated to be questioned. Too many naturalists whose accuracy cannot be doubted have been eyewitnesses to these performances. Among these is Mr. J. K. Lord, who, however, was constrained to confess his utter inability to explain why the birds did so. He was never able to find an acorn that seemed to have been eaten, nor a trace of vegetable matter in their stomachs, and at the close of his investigations he frankly admitted this storing of acorns to be a mystery for which he could offer no satisfactory explanation.
M. H. de Saussure, the Swiss naturalist, in an interesting paper published in 1858 in the Bibliothèque Universelle of Geneva, furnishes some very interesting observations on the habits of a Woodpecker, which he supposed to be the Colaptes mexicanoides of Mexico, of storing collections of acorns in the hollow stems of the maguay plants. Sumichrast, who accompanied Saussure in his excursion, while recognizing the entire truth of the interesting facts he narrates, is confident that the credit of all this instinctive forethought belongs not to the Colaptes, but to the Mexican race of this species. Saussure’s article being too long to quote in full, we give an abstract.
The slopes of a volcanic mountain, Pizarro, near Perote, in Mexico, are covered with immense beds of the maguay (Agave americana), with larger growths of yuccas, but without any other large shrubs or trees. Saussure was surprised to find this silent and dismal wilderness swarming with Woodpeckers. A circumstance so unusual as this large congregation of birds, by nature so solitary, in a spot so unattractive, prompted him to investigate the mystery. The birds were seen to fly first to the stalks of the maguay, to attack them with their beaks, and then to pass to the yuccas, and there repeat their labors. These stalks, upon examination, were all found to be riddled with holes, placed irregularly one above another, and communicating with the hollow cavity within. On cutting open one of these stalks, he found it filled with acorns.
As is well known, this plant, after flowering, dies, its stalk remains, its outer covering hardens into a flinty texture, and its centre becomes hollow. This convenient cavity is used by the Woodpecker as a storehouse for provisions that are unusual food for the tribe. The central cavity of the stalk is only
large enough to receive one acorn at a time. They are packed in, one above the other, until the cavity is full. How did these Woodpeckers first learn to thus use these storehouses, by nature closed against them? The intelligent instinct that enabled this bird to solve this problem Saussure regarded as not the least surprising feature. With its beak it pierces a small round hole through the lower portion into the central cavity, and thrusts in acorns until the hollow is filled to the level of the hole. It then makes a second opening higher up, and fills the space below in a like manner, and so proceeds until the entire stalk is full. Sometimes the space is too small to receive the acorns, and they have to be forced in by blows from its beak. In other stalks there are no cavities, and then the Woodpecker creates one for each acorn, forcing it into the centre of the pith.
The labor necessary to enable the bird to accomplish all this is very considerable, and great industry is required to collect its stores; but, once collected, the storehouse is a very safe and convenient one. Mount Pizarro is in the midst of a barren desert of sand and volcanic débris. There are no oak-trees nearer than the Cordilleras, thirty miles distant, and therefore the collecting and storing of each acorn required a flight of sixty miles.
This, reasons Saussure, is obviously an instinctive preparation, on the part of these birds, to provide the means of supporting life during the arid winter months, when no rain falls and everything is parched. His observations were made in April, the last of the winter months; and he found the Woodpeckers withdrawing food from their depositories, and satisfied himself that the birds were eating the acorn itself, and not the diminutive maggots a few of them contained.
The ingenuity with which the bird managed to get at the contents of each acorn was also quite striking. Its feet being unfit for grasping the acorn, it digs a hole into the dry bark of the yuccas, just large enough to receive the small end of the acorn, which it inserts, making use of its bill to split it open, as with a wedge. The trunks of the yuccas were all found riddled with these holes.
There are several remarkable features to be noticed in the facts observed by Saussure,—the provident instinct which prompts this bird to lay by stores of provisions for the winter; the great distance traversed to collect a kind of food so unusual for its race; and its seeking, in a spot so remote from its natural abode, a storehouse so remarkable. Can instinct alone teach, or have experience and reason taught, these birds, that, better far than the bark of trees, or cracks in rocks, or cavities dug in the earth, or any other known hiding-place, are these hidden cavities within the hollow stems of distant plants? What first taught them how to break through the flinty coverings of these retreats? By what revelation could these birds have been informed that within these dry and closed stalks they could, by searching, find suitable places, protected from moisture, for preserving their stores in a state most favorable for their long preservation, safe from gnawing