406 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



little doubt but when the habits of the remaining Rodent groups are thoroughly- 

 known, it will be found that they all, in addition to their vegetable diet, prey 

 upon insects, worms, and moUusks, if not upon more highly organized animals. 



Among bats the majority appear '.o be purely insectivorous, but the so-called 

 fruit-eating bats — the Pteropidae or flying-foxes — although provided with a com- 

 plex stomach and voluminous intestines, feed also upon such small birds and 

 mammals as they can capture. 



The Proboscideans, of which the elephants of India and Africa are the sole 

 surviving representatives, are purely phytophagous. 



Of the three divisions of the great order of the Ungulata, two — the Solidun- 

 gula and Ruminantia — are as far as we know, strict vegetarians; but among the 

 Pachydermata we find the swine, which may be regarded as the most typically 

 Omnivorous mammals, and the hippopotamus. All the species of swine are eager 

 for animal food. When grubbing in the earth they snap up rats, mice, snakes, 

 insects, etc, , and when opportunity offers they have been known not merely to 

 attack but to devour much larger animals. A horse left tied to a tree, in La 

 Plata, has been known to be killed and eaten by a herd of peccaries. The feral 

 swine of North America have contributed much to the extirpation of the rattle- 

 snake, and the common English pig often contrives to catch and eat up domestic 

 poultry which stray into his sty. 



Among the birds we find a very similar state of things. The number of 

 purely phytophagous species is relatively smaller, that of the exclusively zoophag- 

 ous larger, and that of the forms recognized as omnivorous is increasing as our 

 knowledge of their habits extends. Who, for instance, would, either from the 

 morphology or from the general propensities of vultures, have predicted what 

 has been observed by Mr. Bates, that these unclean birds devour eagerly the 

 fruit of the pupunha or "peach-palm" {GuUelniia speciosa), and "come in quar- 

 relsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe"? The common peacock is called a 

 granivorous and fruit-eating bird; so it is, but at the same time a zealous and ef- 

 ficient destroyer of young death-snakes. Hence the way in which it is shot down 

 by certain blundering sportsmen in India is nothing short of a public calamity. 

 The pheasant is such an eager devourer of wireworms, grasshoppers, and the 

 like, that his extirpation, as threatened by blundering "anti-sportsmen," — if we 

 may coin the term,^ — would be a very doubtful benefit to the farmer. 



The Merulidae — the thrush, blackbird, feldfare, and their allies — occasionally 

 evince predatory habits, especially in severe weather. The most purely phyto- 

 phagous birds are the finches (many of which, however, feed their young upon 

 insects) and the doves. 



We now see that the zoophagous and phytophagous forms of animal life are 

 not separated from each other by any sharply-marked characters, but are connect- 

 ed by a multitude of creatures intermediate in their organizations, and conse- 

 quently adapted for a mixed diet. We see that animal food is regularly, and in 

 considerable proportion, eaten by species not constructed on the typical zoophag- 



