HOW EACH IS FITTED FOR HIS OWN LIFE 107 



ground, and they excavate long tunnels in rot- 

 ten wood. The black bear is a famous ant- 

 hunter, yet his tongue is like a dog's and he gets 

 his ants by lapping them up after he has torn 

 open the rotten logs in which they live. This 

 is the way that the sapsucker obtains his ants, 

 and the brush of stiff hairs is a help to him in 

 such work. We see, then, that it is not so 

 much the food as the manner of feeding that 

 explains the form of the tongue. 



The downy and the hairy are a step farther 

 along in their development. The fourth toe is 

 longer than the others, a condition that we do 

 not find in any of the woodpeckers not strictly 

 arboreal; the tail is of the improved pattern, 

 holding by a brush of bristles rather than by one 

 stiff point at the end of each feather ; the bill is 

 heavier, broader at the base, more heavily ridged, 

 and in every way a stronger tool ; and the tongue 

 is highly extensible and of the spear pattern, 

 sharp-pointed and barbed with recurved hooks. 

 Everything about these birds indicates that they 

 are fitted to live on tree-trunks and to dig for 

 borers. This, indeed, is what they do. 



But the great logcock and the ivory-billed 

 woodpecker, though of the same type as the 

 other larvae-eating woodpeckers, are more highly 

 developed along the same line. We notice the 



