SOME HTOID HINTS. 129 



II. 



Any ornithologist will tell you that a wood- 

 pecker's tongue is the most peculiar organ he 

 ever examined, strangely complicated in its 

 mechanism and singularly striking in the 

 variations of its special development in dif- 

 ferent species, and that no organic feature of 

 any bird has been more minutely studied by 

 comparative anatomists. From Borelli and 

 Aldrovande and Mery and Olaiis Jacobeus on 

 down to Owen, Macgillivray and Parker, there 

 has been no end to the study and literature of 

 the peculiarities observable in the hyoid bone 

 of the Picidee. By all these writers the 

 European green woodpecker has been taken 

 as the type, unless Parker's use of Picus 

 minor in his general anatomical studies may 

 be called an exception. 



The anatomy of the green woodpecker, so 

 far as the tongue is concerned, is almost iden- 

 tical with that of our American red-head- 

 ed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), 

 saving that our bird's skull has no decided 

 groove in its crown. We have two extremely 

 specialized genera, Picus and Colaptes, whose 

 tongue peculiarities are extreme. These may 

 be taken as types for the purposes of this 

 paper. Those who are not ornithologists, 

 however, cannot be supposed to know any- 

 thing about bird-anatomy, therefore it will be 

 necessary to sketch here an outline of the 

 woodpecker's lingual peculiarities. 



The tongue proper is a slender flattish shaft 

 lying between the mandibles, and flat upon 

 the lower one when not in use. Thus disposed, 

 it lacks somewhat of reaching to the end of 

 the bill. Its fore-end is of a hard horny sub- 

 stance, and is armed with barbs not unlike 

 those of a fish-hook. Back of this the tongue- 

 bone (hyoid) is encased in a sheath of muscu- 



