DOWN in Mexico there lives a Woodpecker who stores his nuts and acorns in the hollow stalks of the yuccas and magueys. These hollow stalks are separated by joints into several cavities, and the sagacious bird has somehow found this out, and bores a hole at the upper end of each joint and another at the lower, through which to extract the acorns when wanted. Then it fills up the stalks solidly and leaves its stores there until needed, safe from the depredations of any thievish bird or four-footed animal.

The first place in which this curious habit was observed was on a hill in the midst of a desert. The hill was covered with yuccas and magueys, but the nearest oak trees were thirty miles away, and so it was calculated, these industrious birds had to make a flight of sixty miles for each acorn stowed thus in the stalks!

An observer of birds remarks: "There are several strange features to be noticed in these facts: the provident instinct which prompts this bird to lay by stores of provisions for the winter, the great distance traversed to collect a kind of food so unusual for its race, and its seeking in a place so remote from its natural abode a storehouse so remarkable."

Can instinct alone teach, or have experience and reason taught these birds that, far better than the bark of trees or crevices in rocks or any other hiding place are these hidden cavities they make for themselves with the hollow stems of distant plants?

This we cannot answer. But we do know that one of the most remarkable birds in our country is this California Woodpecker, and that he is well entitled to his Mexican name of el carpintero—the carpenter bird.—Exchange.