THE ANT-EATER. 339 



thickness of a quill, a few inches long*, and likewise terminating 

 in a fringe ; so that the whole roof of the vast mouth resembles 

 a shaggy fur, under which lies the soft and spongy tongue, a 

 monstrous mass often ten feet broad and eighteen feet long. 

 Thus when the whale, after having skimmed with open mouth 

 the surface of the ocean, closes the wide gates of his prodigious 

 jaws, his tiny prey remains entangled by thousands and tens of 

 thousands in a fringy thicket, where it is crushed and bruised 

 by the tongue. 



To satisfy a giant's appetite, this admirable apparatus required 

 to.be constructed on a gigantic scale; hence the enormous 

 dimensions of the cavity of the mouth, and the seemingly dis- 

 proportionate size of the head, which attains about a third part 

 of the length of the whole body, and forms a case or box well- 

 fitted for the reception of a straining or filtering mechanism, 

 suited to the wants of a leviathan. 



The mouth of the great ant-eater is no less wonderfully or- 

 ganized for the seizure and swallowing of minute insects, which 

 paws, however sharply armed or however active in their move- 

 ments, could never have captured in sufficient numbers; and as the 

 bulky jaws of the whale cease to appear uncouth when we come 

 to consider their uses, thus also the snoutlike elongation of the 

 ant-eater's diminutive head no longer seems preposterous when 

 once we know that this singular form is in exact accordance 

 with the strange animal's 

 mode of life. Here no spa- 

 cious cavity was required 

 for the reception of two 



rOWS Of powerful teeth Or Head of the Ant-Eater. 



of a large filtering appa- 

 ratus, but a mere furrow for a long and extensile tongue, 

 which renders all other instruments for seizing its prey super- 

 fluous as we find on following the animal into the Brazilian 

 savannahs, where the cities of the white-ants are dispersed in 

 such vast numbers. Approaching one of these wonderful 

 structures, the ant-eater strikes a hole through its wall of 

 clay with his powerful claws ; and as the ants issue forth by 

 thousands to resent the attack, stretches but his tongue for 

 their reception. Their legions, eager for revenge, immediately 



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