though dead wood.  One of the most remarkable circumstances connected with this habit of the woodpecker is the length of flight required and accomplished.  At Mount Pizarro, where such storehouses are found, the nearest oak trees are in the Cordilleras, thirty miles distant; thus the birds are obliged to make a journey of sixty miles to accomplish the storing of one acorn.  At first it seemed strange that a bird should spend so much labor to place those bits of food, and so far away.  De Saussure, a Swiss naturalist, published in the Bibliotheque Universelle, of Geneva, entertaining accounts of the Mexican Colaptes, a variety of the familiar “high hold,” or golden winged woodpecker.  They were seen to store acorns in the dead stalks of the maguey (Agave Americana).  Sumichrast, who accompanied him to Central America, records the same facts.  These travelers saw great numbers of the woodpeckers in a region on the slope of a range of volcanic mountains.  There was little else of vegetation than the Agave, whose barren, dead stems were studded with acorns placed there by the woodpeckers.

The maguey throws up a stalk about fifteen feet in height yearly, which, after flowering, grows stalky and brittle, and remains an unsightly thing.  The interior is pithy, but after the death of the stalk the pith contracts, and leaves the greater portion of the interior hollow, as we have seen in the case of the cactus branches.  How the birds found that these stalks were hollow is a problem not yet solved, but, nevertheless, they take the trouble to peck away at the hard bark, and once penetrated, they commence to fill the interior; when one space is full, the bird pecks a little higher up, and so continues.

Dr. Heerman, of California, describes the California Melanerpes as one of the most abundant of the woodpeckers; and remarks that it catches insects on the wing like a flycatcher.  It is well determined that it also eats the acorns that it takes so much pains to transport.

[Illustration:  FLOWER OF CEREUS GIGANTEUS.]

It seems that these birds also store the pine trees, as well as the oaks.  It is not quite apparent why these birds exhibit such variation in habits; they at times select the more solid trees, where the storing cannot go on without each nut is separately set in a hole of its own.  There seems an instinct prompting them to do this work, though there may not be any of the nuts touched again by the birds.  Curiously enough, there are many instances of the birds placing pebbles instead of nuts in holes they have purposely pecked for them.  Serious trouble has been experienced by these pebbles suddenly coming in contact with the saw of the mill through which the tree is running.  The stone having been placed in a living tree, as is often the case, its exterior had been lost to sight during growth.

Some doubt has been entertained about the purpose of the bird in storing the nuts in this manner.  De Saussure tells us he has witnessed the birds eating the acorns after they had been placed in holes in trees, and expresses his conviction that the insignificant grub which is only seen in a small proportion of nuts is not the food they are in search of.