"They are interesting, even when in one short evening I can give but in bald, brief outline a few of their characteristics. Your words suggest the true way of becoming acquainted with them. Regard them as neighbors and guests, in the main very useful friends, and then you will naturally wish to know more about them. In most instances they are quite susceptible to kindness, and are ready to be intimate with us. That handsome bird, the blue jay, so wild at the East, is as tame and domestic as the robin in many parts of the West, because treated well. He is also a winter resident, and one of the most intelligent birds in existence. Indeed, he is a genuine humorist, and many amusing stories are told of his pranks. His powers of mimicry are but slightly surpassed by those of the mocking-bird, and it is his delight to send the smaller feathered tribes to covert by imitating the cries of the sparrow, hawk, and other birds of prey. When so tame as to haunt the neighborhood of dwellings, he is unwearied in playing his tricks on domestic fowls, and they--silly creatures!--never learn to detect the practical joke, for, no matter how often it is repeated, they hasten panic-stricken to shelter. Wilson speaks of him as the trumpeter of the feathered chorus, but his range of notes is very great, passing from harsh, grating sounds, like the screeching of an unlubricated axle, to a warbling as soft and modulated as that of a bluebird, and again, prompted by his mercurial nature, screaming like a derisive fish-wife. Fledglings will develop contentedly in a cage, and become tame and amusing pets. They will learn to imitate the human voice and almost every other familiar sound. A gentleman in South Carolina had one that was as loquacious as a parrot, and could utter distinctly several words. In this region they are hunted, and too shy for familiar acquaintance. When a boy, I have been tantalized almost beyond endurance by them, and they seemed to know and delight in the fact. I was wild to get a shot at them, but they would keep just out of range, mocking me with discordant cries, and alarming all the other game in the vicinity. They often had more sport than I. It is a pity that the small boy with his gun cannot be taught to let them alone. If they were as domestic and plentiful as robins, they would render us immense service. A colony of jays would soon destroy all the tent-caterpillars on your place, and many other pests. In Indiana they will build in the shrubbery around dwellings, but we usually hear their cries from mountain-sides and distant groves. Pleasant memories of rambles and nutting excursions they always awaken. The blue jay belongs to the crow family, and has all the brains of his black-coated and more sedate cousins. At the North, he will, like a squirrel, lay up for winter a hoard of acorns and beech mast. An experienced bird-fancier asserts that he found the jay 'more ingenious,