lady who owned the ranch did not
trouble her head greatly about the almonds, of which we had a very fine
double avenue. For one thing, the crop in 1886 was not very heavy, and
there was no great price to be got at any time. I and the Italian
vine-dressers (there were some eight or nine of them) always had
sufficient to fill our pockets with, and that without the labour of
picking them up. We reserved the avenues themselves for Sunday, and
cracked the fallen fruit with two stones as we sat on the ground; but
for solid consumption, not mere dessert, we went elsewhere. I remember
my astonishment when I discovered in what manner my companions supplied
themselves. One day, while standing by the gate which led from the
stableyard, an Italian, with the romantic name of Luigi Zanoni, remarked
suddenly that he would like some almonds. He looked up at the tree
overhead, which was an old oak with gnarled limbs, here and there broken
and rotting. "Not out of an oak tree," I laughed; and then Luigi went to
the wood pile and brought my sharpest axe back with him. He jumped on
the fence, then into the tree, and in a moment was over my head on a big
limb. Seeing him there, two or three other Italians came up. Zanoni
walked about the level branches, tapping with the back of the axe.
Presently he stopped, and began cutting into the tree vigorously. Just
there it was apparently hollow, for with five or six blows he struck out
a big bit of shell-like bark and let fall a tremendous shower of
almonds. Then he sat down, and, putting his hand into the hollow, raked
them out wholesale. Probably he scattered two gallons on the ground,
for while we scrambled for them they were falling in a shower.
Henceforth I, too, could find almonds, and I prospected every
likely-looking oak or madrona within three hundred yards of the
avenue--sometimes with great success, sometimes with none. It was quite
as fluky as gold mining or honey hunting.

Of course birds had made these stores; probably the jays and magpies,
who yet retained an instinct which had become useless. With the equable
climate and mild open winters of Central California, no bird need store
up food; and this was shown by the great accumulations which had never
been touched. Moreover, nuts were often put in holes that were
inaccessible to so large a bird as a jay. So necessity has never
corrected the failings of instinct by making a jay wonder, in the depths
of winter, why he had been fool enou