SENSE OF TASTE. 175 



cient to tear off the skin even of large animals. Ant-eaters 

 are furnished with a very long and slender tongue, covered 

 with a viscid, adhesive secretion, whereby they are able to 

 seize their prey, on thrusting it into an ant-hill* 



16. Whales have an enormous tongue, though it has been 

 doubted whether it is endowed with the sense of taste. They 

 have, moreover, projecting downwards from the upper jaw, a 

 kindofpallisade, consisting of several hundred plates of whale- 

 bone, the outer edges of which are sharp, the inner fringed 

 with long hair like appendages, the spaces between the 

 plates being little more than half an inch. The length of 

 the plates sometimes exceeds twelve feet. This pallisade, 

 when the mouth is closed, is covered by the enormous fleshy 

 lower lip, but when open, it presents a kind of grating 

 through which the water loaded with medusa and other 

 small animals, flows* Captain Parry states that these medu- 

 sa or sea-blubber, so abound in the arctic seas, that when 

 the water is still, and the surface smooth, they present a 

 striking resemblance to a thick snow-fall, when the flakes are 

 large and the air calm. The soft, spongy texture which 

 forms the tongue of the whale, is thought to be better 

 adapted for licking the food from the hairy whale-bone roof, 

 and transferring it to the gullet, than to serve as an instru- 

 ment of taste. 



17. The tongue of birds varies much in form and con- 

 sistence. In some, it is horny, as in the toucan, where it is 

 several inches in length and exceedingly narrow, like a long 

 strip of whale-bone ; or in the wood-pecker, to the tip of 

 whose tongue there is fixed a long, sharp, pointed, spear-like 

 body with serrated edges, for piercing and seizing on insects 

 burrowing beneath the bark of trees. Parrots, which belong 

 to the same class, have soft fleshy tongues well adapted to the 

 exercise of taste. 



28. In reptiles also, we find great variety of forms and 

 applications of the tongue. In the crocodile it is small and 

 imrnoveable, so much so, as to lead some naturalists to deny 



