Concerning Animals and Other Matters

he public that "The -- typewriter is founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my

pend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising their evolutions; but until you have looked through them a

ars and sings to its sweetheart; no beast remains in lifelong partnership with the wife of its youth; no beast builds itself a summer-house and decks it with feathers and bright shells. A beast is a grovelling denizen of the earth; a bird is a free citizen of the air. And who can say that there

t and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds, you may see it in its simplicity. The size and shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and have a sharp edge for shelling seeds; some are longer and fine-pointed, for picking worms and caterpillars out of their hiding-place

ious planes and saws, each intended for one distinct kind of fine work. All these the joiner has need of, but a schoolboy would rather have one good, strong pocket-knife than the whole boxful. For, just in proportion as each tool is perfected f

ecialist, but a "handy man," bold, enterprising, resourceful, and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him-grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a

but an ancient ancestor of the snipe found that, if it followed them into marshy lands, it could probe the soft ground and drag them out of their chambers. For this operation it has now a bill three inches long, straight, thin and sensitive at the tip, a beautiful instrument, but good for no purpose except extracting worms from soft ground. If frost or droug

arly as big as a crow. It is nothing else than a hatchet in two parts, which, when locked together, present a steeled edge about three-eighths of an inch in breadth. The hatchet is two and a half inches long by one in breadth at the base, and a prominent ridge, or keel, runs down the top from base to point. It is further strengthened by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was her tongue, w

-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing open-mouthed af

op among twigs, need a long reach; hence the portentous machines which they carry on their faces. The beak of a hornbill is nothing else than a pair of tongs long enough to reach and strong enough to wrench off a wild fig from its thick stem. If

lower jaw free to move. But in the parrot the upper mandible is also hinged, so that each plays freely on the other. The upper, as we all know, is hooked and pointed; the lower has a sharp edge. The tongue is thick, muscular, and sensitive. T

ong and sharp-pointed like scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "perniciou

form is handy for storks, which do not pluck fish out of water so much, but scoop up frogs, crabs, and reptiles from the ground. The ridiculous bill of the puffin, or sea-parrot, is an ecc

ower consists of two thin, elastic bones joined at the point, a mere ring to carry the curious yellow bag that hangs from it. In pictures this is represented as a creel in which the kind pelican carries home the children's breakfast; you are allowed to see the tail of a big fish hanging out. But it is not a creel; it is a net. The great birds, marshalled in line on some broad lake or marsh, and beating the water with their wings, drive the fish before them until they have got a dense crowd huddled in panic and confusion b

deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue, and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas, draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with t

eir respective industries, there sit apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to w