A jay is something more than a bird with blue feathers. October 23, 1889, it snowed violently for three hours, and the ground was white. Masses of snow, too, clung to the limp foliage that remained, and gave a curious aspect to the wooded hillsides. It was then that the jays were moved to unwonted activity, and I saw them at their best. The snow puzzled them, and, being intent upon their own affairs, they paid no heed to my proximity. “What does this mean?” was the question I fancied each asked of his comrade, and then a dozen would attempt explanation at the same time. Such a chattering! Although the air was thick with snow, it did not muffle the harsh sounds—noises as distracting as cracked sleigh-bells. A great company of these birds had been for a week in the hillside woods, sociably inclined but not intimately associated. The snow brought them together, and after an hour of vain discussion, as a compact flock, they left the woods and flew in a direct line for a cluster of cedars half a mile away. It appeared to me that some one of these birds made the suggestion that the cedars were a better protection than half-leaved oak woods, and all took up with it. At any rate, that is where the birds went and remained until the snow-squall was over. Of course, it might have been a mere coincidence, and all their chattering mere meaningless noise, and so, to the end of the chapter; but I am not disposed to view bird-life from such a stupid standpoint. It may suit the “feather-splitters,” as Burroughs aptly calls them, to look upon birds as mere conveniences for their nomenclatorial skill, but he is happy who escapes them and seeks directly of each bird he sees to know what thoughts well up from its little but lively brain. Now, I have never seen, but upon this occasion, a large number of blue jays, a dozen or more, fly in a compact flock. Here, on the home hillside, and I know nothing of them elsewhere, they wander about during the autumn in companies, but always in an independent manner, as if a very general knowledge of the company’s whereabouts was quite sufficient; but to-day such a method would have been impracticable. The air was too thick with snow, and therefore, predetermining the direction, they gathered upon the same tree, and then, when closer together than ever I saw red-winged blackbirds, off they flew. To say that this simple occurrence does not prove beyond question a wide range of mental faculties is to deny that two and two make four. Probably the unhappy growler who descants upon the all-essential importance of “the element of accuracy,” which no one denies, will find this incident contrary to the officially recorded conditions of jay life, and insist that I saw red-winged blackbirds and mistook them.