HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



227 



its possessor not merely to tear away the stringy, 

 fibrous bark, but to penetrate deep fissures in the 

 body of the tree, and to dig long galleries in the 

 larger branches, in search of its insect prey. 



Perhaps the most powerful of these workers in 

 wood is the Ivory-bill (Campephil us principalis), so 

 called from the colour and consistence of its 





Fig. 124. Ivory Bill (Campephitus principalis). 



polished beak (fig. 124). " Wherever (says Wilson, 

 in his 'American Ornithology') he frequents, he 

 leaves numerous monuments of his industry behind 

 him. We there see enormous pine-trees with cart- 

 loads of bark lying around their roots, and chips of 

 the trunk itself in such quantities as to suggest the 

 idea that half a dozen axemen had been at work 

 there the whole morning. The body of the tree is 

 also disfigured with so numerous and so large 

 excavations that one can hardly conceive it possible 

 for the whole to be the work of a 

 woodpecker." 



Another exception we find in the 

 Oxpeckers (or Buphagids) of South 

 Africa, whose strange destiny it is to 

 relieve the buffaloes of the parasitic 

 larvoe with which their hides are in- 

 fested. The beaks of these birds are 

 remarkably strong, and square in 

 shape, well adapted to pierce the 

 thick integument with which these 

 animals are clothed, and to tear the 

 disgusting grub from its place of 

 concealment. 



Where the aliment is of a mingled nature, partly 

 of grain and partly of insects (which is, in fact, 



are furnished with a flat, wide mouth, adapted to 

 grasp, not to break up, floating bodies ; an opera- 

 tion considerably aided by a number of stiff hairs 

 which surround the base of the bill (fig. 125). On 

 looking at the beak of the Humming-bird, we "find 

 this organ to be greatly diversified in form, and that 

 each of these variations appears to be specially 

 adapted for some given purpose. Indeed I have 

 never seen the law of adaptation more beautifully 

 exemplified than in the multiplied forms exhibited 

 in the bills of the members of the various genera 

 of this family of birds. If we examine the extra- 

 ordinarily lengthened bill of Docimastes ensifer and 



Fig. 126. Lesbia Gouldii. 



the short, feeble bill of Lesbia Gouldii (fig. 126), we 

 see the extremes as regards the length of this 

 organ, and we are not less astonished at the func- 

 tions they are both intended to perform. The bill 

 of the D. ensifer, which is more than five inches 



Fig. 123. Goatsucker (Caprimulgus). 



usually the case), the beak is short and tolerably 

 strong; where it is purely animal, it is weak in 

 structure, though variable in shape. Thus, the 

 birds whose lot it is to capture and devour their 

 prey on the wing — the Swallows and Goatsuckers — 



Fig. 12/. Docimastes ensifer. 



long (fig. 127) and which contains a tongue capable 

 of being protruded nearly as far beyond its tip, is 

 most admirably fitted for the exploration of the 



Fig. 123. Helianthea eos. 



lengthened and pendent corollas of the Brugmansia?, 

 while the short-billed Lesbise clinglothe upper por : 



