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
