38 Introduction. 



lurking beneath them ; from which practice they derive their 

 name. Perhaps it would be impossible to conceive an instru- 

 ment more beautifully adapted for this purpose, being strong, 

 very hard, quite straight, and drawn to a fine point, and forming 

 altogether a very powerful lever. 



Again, the Spoonbill, as its name implies, presents a remark- 

 able formation of beak. This is also a wader, and a member of 

 the family of herons ; its haunts are chiefly pools of water on 

 the sea-shore, and its food consists of small fishes, aquatic insects, 

 sand-hoppers, etc. To obtain these, and when caught to hold 

 them fast, the adult spoonbill is armed with a beak, very long, 

 broad, and thick at the base ; thin, and very much flattened 

 towards the extremity, where it is rounded and shaped like a 

 spoon or spatula. As a further means of enabling it to hold its 

 slippery prey, the inside of this weapon is studded with small, 

 hard tubercles, and is rough like a file. Bewick adds that the 

 beak flaps together not unlike two pieces of leather. It is 

 curious that in the young birds (which do not come to maturity 

 and assume the adult plumage till the third year) the beak is 

 soft and flexible, not so large as, and without the roughness so 

 conspicuous in, that of the adults. 



Another and very remarkable peculiarity in the same organ is 

 presented by the Shoveller, or as it is provincially styled, the 

 'Broad-bill.' This duck feeds chiefly in shallow water, or 

 marshes, lakes, rivers, and muddy shores : its food consists of 

 grasses and decayed vegetable matter, as well as worms and 

 insects, and to detect and separate these from the mud and the 

 water in which they are contained, the beak is singularly 

 adapted. In shape this instrument is long, broad, depressed, 

 the tip rounded like a spoon, and terminated by a small hooked 

 nail ; internally the mandibles are furnished with rows of thin, 

 comb-like bristles ; these seem to be very susceptible of feeling, 

 and enable the bird to select the nutritious and reject the 

 useless food, whilst this beautiful instrument, forming with the 

 tongue a perfect sieve or strainer, retains only what is fit for sus- 

 tenance. It was commonly supposed by naturalists that the beak 



