ll, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but
lies flat on it, upside down.

In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed,
that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit
apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to
work, but weapons wherewith to slay. And these take tribute of the rest,
not with their consent, but of right.

III

TAILS

The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and
escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a
microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the
movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I
cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have
I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this
world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious
is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different
things and yet one. Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare
and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some
hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they
serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all. In the course of
evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man. What was
their purpose and mission? What place have they filled in the scheme of
things? In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail?

If we try to commence--as scientific method requires--with a
definition, we stumble on a key, at the very threshold, which opens the
door. For there is no definition of a tail; it is not, in its nature,
anything at all. When an animal's fore-legs are fitted on to its
backbone at the proper distance from the hind-legs, if any of the
backbone remains over, we call it a tail. But it has no purpose; it is a
mere surplus, which a tailor (the pun is unavoidable) would have trimmed
off. And, lo! in this very negativeness lies the whole secret of the
multifarious positiveness of tails. For the absence of special purpose
is the chance of general usefulness. The ear must fulfil its purpose or
fail entirely, for it can do nothing else. Eyes, nose and mouth, hands
and feet, all have their duties; the tail is the unemployed. And if we
allow that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then
the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account
affor