Jay
Jay names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Jay a genus of birds belonging to the crow family
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a genus of birds belonging to the crow family. The common jay of England is an ashen gray bird tinged with red or purple and marked with black. Only its wing covers are blue. The Florida jay is a gray-blue bird of the Florida coast. A small bluejay is also local in the Gulf States. The Canada jay, whiskey jack, moose bird, or lumber jack, as it is variously called, is a grayish bird with a white forehead and a dirty white neck "like a magnified chickadee clad in singularly fur-like, thick, puffy gray feathers." It is a familiar adjunct of northern lumber camps. It establishes intimate relations with one who rests to eat a lunch, and will fly down almost within a hand's reach for crumbs or bacon rinds thrown from the camper's tin plate. It nests in March before snow goes off, and manages in some way, like an owl, to keep its eggs from freezing. The common bluejay, well named from voice and color, is an intelligent bird of striking habits and plumage, too well known to require description. "The bluejay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay lightblue coat and white under-clothes; screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove," says Washington Irving. None overlook the large crest on its head and the deep blue wings and tail; but few boys, perhaps, have noted that the white tip of its blue tail does not cross the middle pair of tail feathers, that the wings are barred with black, and that a black stripe runs from the back of the head down the sides of the neck and across the breast. In addition to his excellent quality of staying with us all the year around, the bluejay is really an efficient provider. All through the autumn this blue worker is busy hammering nuts, acorns, seeds, and grains of corn into the forks and split branches of trees. It is credited with considerable ability in mimicking the call of other birds and is something of a ventriloquist. Justice requires the admission that the jay is addicted to harrying the nests of small birds and to devouring both eggs and nestlings. On this account a shotgun is not infrequently brought into requisition, when otherwise this shrill aristocrat would be welcome to consider the dooryard his particular province. Ordinarily the bluejay nests in the crotch of a scrub oak about fifteen feet from the ground. From four to six olive green eggs are marked usually with faint cinnamon brown spots. See Magpie ; Jack Daw; Crow
Jay JOHN, an American statesman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN, an American statesman; born in New York City, Dec. 12, 1745; graduated at King's College (now Columbia University) in 1764; admitted to the bar in 1768. Elected to the 1st Continental Congress in 1774, and re-elected in 1775, he prepared addresses to the people of Great Britain and Canada, and to his own countrymen; drafted the constitution of New York State in 1777, and was appointed chief-justice of the State; was returned to Congress in 1778 and elected its president, and in the following year was sent as minister to Spain. In 1782 he was added by Congress to the peace commissioners, and it was mainly by his efforts that the treaty was brought to a conclusion on terms so satisfactory to the United States. In 1784- 1789 he was secretary for foreign affairs. On the adoption of the National Constitution in 1789 he wrote in its favor in the "Federalist"; and after the organization of the Federal Government, Washington having offered him his choice of the offices in his gift, he selected that of chief-justice of the Supreme Court. In 1794 he concluded with Lord Grenville the convention familiarly known as "Jay's treaty," which provided for the recovery by British subjects of pre-revolutionary debts and by Americans of losses incurred by illegal capture by British cruisers, and the determination of the E. frontier of what is now the State of Maine; the British were to surrender the W. posts held by them in 1786, and there was to be reciprocity of inland trade between the United States and British North America. The treaty, though favorable to the United States, was passionately denounced by can rights and a betrayal of France; but it was ratified by Washington in August, 1795. Jay was governor of New York from 1795 to 1801. Then, though offered his former post of chiefjustice, he retired from public life, and passed the remainder of his days at his estate of Bedford, Westchester co., N. Y., where he died, May 17, 1829. JEANNE D'ALBRÊT (zhän-dal-brā'), the Calvinistic mother of Henry IV. of France through whom he succeeded to Navarre and Béarn. She was born in 1528 and died in 1572. JEANNE D'ARC. See JOAN OF ARC.
Jay the popular name of Garrulus glandarius
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the popular name of Garrulus glandarius, a species of Corvidæ, of a vinous red color; the back pale gray; the rump and upper tail coverts white; the tail black or gray, with bluish-gray bars; the wing coverts light gray; the bastard wing or primary coverts barred with black or bright cobalt blue; head with an erectile crest; forehead white, streaked with black. Length about 13 inches. It is a beautiful bird, but attacks peas and other garden crops. It also eats worms, larvæ, and snails. It is often kept as a cage bird. The common blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, is found over a large portion of North America. The green jay of the United States is Xanthura luxu- The long-tailed blue jays are also osa. arranged under Xanthura, though they have not the yellow tail which the generic name suggests.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that "a shotgun is not infrequently brought into requisition" against the blue jay is now unlawful in the United States: the bird has been protected since the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and stomach-content studies have since shown that eggs and nestlings make up only a small fraction of its diet, most of which is acorns and other mast. The taxonomy has also moved on. Aiton's "Florida jay" is now the Florida scrub-jay, Aphelocoma coerulescens, a full species confined to Florida scrub and listed as federally threatened since 1987, while the "green jay" Collier's placed in Xanthura is now Cyanocorax yncas; the blue jay keeps the name Cyanocitta cristata that Collier's gave it in 1921. The Canada jay of the lumber camps was renamed the gray jay for decades before the American Ornithological Society restored "Canada jay" in 2018, and blue jay numbers fell sharply in parts of the East after West Nile virus arrived in 1999.
Written for this edition, 2026.