974 LONGUE 
nerves (p. 627), together with glands, blood-vessels and the tegu- 
mentary sheath, which last is composed of horny epidermal cells, 
and is frequently frayed out on the margins or at the tip, in various 
ways according to the use to which it is put, but mainly connected 
with the mode of feeding. A similar if not identical modification 
of the Tongue seems to have been brought about in Birds belonging 
to widely-different groups from adaptation to the same circum- 
stances; but here we must restrict ourselves to a notice of the 
more striking or aberrant types, only remarking that generalizations 
as well as conclusions from the shape of the bill and from the 
nature of the food are very unsafe. 
The Tongué is frequently small in Birds which have the bill, 
mouth and gullet very large, so that bulky food can be swallowed 
whole and quickly. In Pelecanus and Sula, for instance, the free 
part of the Tongue is reduced to a little nodule. A similar 
diminution is apparent in the Ratitz and Crypturi, in some Sphenisci 
and Z'ubinares, in Numenius, Ciconix, [bididx, Cancroma, Bucerotidz, 
Upupidx, Alcedinide and Caprimulgidx. On the other hand the 
most marked development of the organ is found in the Anseres and 
Phenicopterus. In the former it ends in a horny scoop, concave 
above, convex beneath, while its sides are beset with a row or rows 
of horny papillz like very short bristles or denticulations, which fit 
more or less into the similarly-serrated edges of the rhamphotheca or 
sheath of the BILL; but its upper surface is furnished with short 
and soft papille sometimes of velvety appearance. Along the 
middle of the Tongue runs a furrow bordered on each side by a 
horny ridge, beset more or less thickly with hard papille which aid 
in swallowing the food. On the under side of the root lies a pair 
of cushion-like swellings, filled with fat. In most Birds-of-Prey the 
Tongue is thick, soft and spoon-shaped, but short; in the Puc 
(WoopPECKER) it is long, round, narrow, pointed at the end and, 
in the most insectivorous forms of the group, beset with spines or 
hooks directed backward. The elaborate apparatus already de- 
scribed (pp. 452, 619) serves to protrude the organ, by means of 
which the bird is able to stir up and, in Mr. Lucas’s neat phrase 
cannot serve as organs of taste though they may act as organs of touch. More- 
over, corpuscles of the same kind are generally distributed not only in the palate 
and bill (as in the Snipes for instance, and in the nail-like tip of the beak in 
Anseres), but also in great numbers in different parts of the body—as near the 
roots of the contour-feathers, especially the rectrices and remiges, in the cloaca, 
in the mesentery and, last though not least, in the joints of the skeleton, but 
above all in the periosteum of the tibia. However, ‘‘ taste” is one of the diffuse 
senses. 
1 The extraordinary reduction of the Tongue in Jbis and Platalea induced 
Nitzsch (Pterylographie, p. 193) to combine those genera in one group as 
Hemiglottides. 
