cannot play that part. One is timid, another fastidious,
another shy but ingenious. So, in the universal competition for a
living, each has taken its own line according to the bent of its nature,
and its one tool has been perfected for its trade until it can follow no
other. The thrush catches such worms as rashly show themselves
above-ground; 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 drought hardens the ground, the snipe must starve or
travel. Among the many "lang nebbit" birds that follow the same
profession as the snipe, some, like the curlew and the ibis, have curved
bills of prodigious length. I do not know the comparative advantages of
the two forms, but no doubt each bird swears by its own pattern, as
every golfer does by his own putter.

But now behold another grub-hunter, which, distasting mud, has
discovered an unworked mine in the trunks of trees. There, in deep
burrows, lurked great succulent beetle-grubs, demanding only a tool with
which they might be dug out. This has been perfected by many stages, and
I have now before me a splendid specimen of the most improved
pattern--namely, the bill of the great black woodpecker of Western
India, a bird nearly 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, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the
bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine
spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a
row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with
some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must sit tight
indeed which this corkscrew will not draw when once the hatchet has
opened a way.

The swallows and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to
hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the m