Country Life
EVERY unusual bout of weather produces quick reactions in animals and plants. The July drought has brought an abnormal crop of such changes. Let the birds come first. They have been hungry as well as thirsty, and in this stress, as is wont to happen, they have recourse to gardens, those neat little sanctuaries abounding everywhere. My own garden has been invaded by both rooks and jays ; and of all the birds there are the jay is the greediest. It has natural carnivorous inclinations, but when animal food fails . it makes up with vegetables and fruit, and appears to believe, like some country people, that it takes an immense quantity of these foods to atone for a lack of flesh. It will rip open peapods till a whole row is almost cleared. It will take every red raspberry in a row, proceeding at a pace that leaves any accustomed fruit- eater, such as a blackbird, far in the rear. It may do some good ; for an occasional peapod, its oyster, contains a white grub, its pearl ; and it may be that the desire for the grub whets its energy in tearing open the pods. It may do some good, but . Any professional gardener will understand the aposiopesis.
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