234 ARTIFICES OF ANIMALS. 



movements are rapid or slow, according to their intentions, 

 and the situation of the animals they wish to devour. Rapa- 

 cious birds uniformly endeavor to rise higher in the air than 

 their prey, that they may have an opportunity of darting 

 forcibly down upon it with their pounces. To counteract 

 these artifices, nature has endowed the smaller and more 

 innocent species of birds with many arts of defence. When 

 a hawk appears, the small birds, if they find it convenient, 

 conceal themselves in hedges or brush-wood. When deprived 

 of this opportunity, they often, in great numbers, seem to fol- 

 low the hawk, and to expose themselves unnecessarily to 

 danger, while in fact, by their numbers, their perpetual 

 changes of direction, and their uniform endeavors to rise 

 above him, they perplex the hawk to such a degree, that he 

 is unable to fix upon a single object; and, after exerting all 

 his art and address, he is frequently obliged to relinquish the 

 pursuit. When in the extremity of danger, and after employ- 

 ing every other artifice in vain, small birds have been often 

 known to fly to men for protection. This is a plain indica- 

 tion that these animals, though they in general avoid the hu- 

 man race, are by no means so much afraid of man as of rapa- 

 cious birds. 



The ravens often frequent the sea-shores in quest of food. 

 When they find their inability to break the shells of muscles, 

 &c., to accomplish this purpose they use a very ingenious 

 stratagem. They carry a muscle, or other shell-fish, high up 

 in the air, and then dash it down upon a rock, by which 

 means the shell is broken, and they obtain the end they had 

 in view. 



The woodpecker is furnished with a very long and flexible 

 tongue. It feeds upon ants and other small insects. Nature 

 has endowed this bird with a singular instinct. It knows how 

 to procure food without seeing its prey. It attaches itself to 

 the trunks or branches of decayed trees ; and, wherever it 

 perceives a hole or crevice, it darts in its long tongue, and 

 brings it out loaded with insects of different kinds. This op- 

 eration is certainly instinctive ; but the instinct is assisted by 

 the instruction of the parents ; for the young are no sooner 

 able to fly, than the parents, by the force of example, teach 

 them to resort to trees, and to insert their tongues indiscrimi- 

 nately into every hole or fissure. 



* A small bird of the hawk kind, called the nine-killer^has 

 been observed at particular seasons of the year to catch grass- 

 hoppers, beetles, or other insects, kill them and stick them 



