8 



Bird -Lore 



tongue of the Penguin may be very serviceable for catching or holding 

 small crustaceans and fishes. 



Before going farther it may be well to glance for a moment at 

 the seven or eight little bones forming the hyoid, or framework on 

 which the tongue is built, and to which are attached the muscles 

 that move it. The two foremost of these little bones, often so closely 



THE HYOID OF THE PEWEE 



united as to appear one, are imbedded in the body of the tongue 

 itself, together with the single bone to which they are attached, 

 while the hindmost pair curl up around the back of the skull, and 

 from the varying proportions of these bones we can tell something 

 of the manner in which and extent to which the tongue is used. If 

 the foremost bones are long the tongue is long, if they are stout the 

 tongue is thick and fleshy, as in the Ducks, and if they are almost 

 wanting, as in the Cormorants, then there is no tongue to speak of. 

 The hindmost bones determine the extent to which the tongue can 

 be protruded : if they are long the tongue is very extensile, if they 

 are short it is but little so. In the Hummingbirds these epibran- 

 chials, as they are called, run back over the skull, meet one another, 

 and extend forward side by side to the very base of the bill. It 

 might be thought that this marked the utmost limit of length at- 

 tainable, but some of the Woodpeckers manage to exceed this, some- 

 times, as in the Downy Woodpecker, by curling the ends of the 



THE SPEAR OF THE HAIRY WOODPECKER 



THE ARROW OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDER 



hyoid around the right eyeball, and sometimes, as in the Flicker, by 

 letting the bones run forward into the nostril and thence to the tip 

 of the bill. The Woodpeckers thus obtain the longest and most ex- 

 tensible tongues found among birds, and, as these tongues are used 



