Half an hour before, in almost the same place, I had stopped to look at six birds perched in a bare treetop. They were so silent, so motionless, and so closely bunched, that I put up my opera-glass expecting to find them cedar waxwings. Instead, they were nothing but blue jays. While my glass was still on them, the whole flock seemed to be taken with a dancing fit. This lasted for a quarter of a second, more or less, and was so quickly over that I cannot say positively that it was anything more than an optical illusion. The next moment all hands took flight with loud screams. They did not go far, and presently crossed the road in front of me, still screaming lustily, for no reason that I could discover signs of. However, the blue jay is as far as possible from being a fool, and whenever he talks it is safe concluding that he has something to say. It has long been an opinion of mine that the jay language is worthy of systematic study. Some man with a gift of patience and a genius for linguistics should undertake a jay dictionary; setting down not only all jay words and phrases, but giving us, as far as possible, their meaning and their English equivalents. It would make a sizable volume, and would be a real contribution to knowledge. All bird language, I have no doubt, is full of significance. It has been evolved exactly as human language has been, and while it is presumably less copious and less nicely shaded than ours, it is probably less radically unlike it than we may have been accustomed to assume. That it has something answering to our “parts of speech” we may almost take for granted. It could scarcely be intelligible--as it assuredly is--if some words did not express action, others things, and still others quality. Verbs, substantives, adjectives, and adverbs,--these, at least, all real language must possess. The jay tongue has them, I would warrant, in rudimentary forms, but in good number and of clearly defined significance. Jays are natural orators; for among birds, as among men, there are “diversities of operations.” “All species are not equally eloquent,” said Gilbert White. And the same capable naturalist made another shrewd remark, which I would commend to the man, whoever he may be, who shall undertake the jay-English dictionary that I have been desiderating. “The language of birds,” said White, “is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and understood.”