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What is the use of the LarFs long heel-claw ? By Ralph 

 Carr of Hedgeley. 



The serrated appendage on one of the toes of the Bittern was 

 for a long time a perplexity to the best ornithologists, until 

 at length the bird was observed to avail himself of it to cleanse 

 his beak from the slime adhering to it from the fish and rep- 

 tiles on which he had been feeding. But for such an admi- 

 rable instrument as this curry-comb or scraper, his beak would 

 not only have been liable to remain daubed with slime, but 

 the latter would have glued the downy feathers from his plu- 

 mage around his mandibles, until the mass became irremov- 

 able. The Bittern's serrated toe is therefore manifestly one 

 of the most beautiful contrivances in nature. No more dis- 

 tinct and suificient explanation of its presence could possibly 

 have been given than that we now possess. 



As I have never seen the Lark's long heel taken as a sub- 

 ject of inquiry, with a view to explain why so small a bird 

 should have been furnished by its Creator with such an un- 

 usual extension of foot backwards, I will venture to offer a 

 solution of the mystery, being one which presented itself to 

 me one evening as I was returning home from shooting late 

 in autumn. The season was just verging upon winter, the 

 afternoon had been a wild and stormy one with cold showers 

 of rain from the north-west, and the wind was rising into a 

 gale at sunset. I was crossing an exposed, naked stubble, 

 where the surface of the earth, glittering with wet, was begin- 

 ning to freeze, under the intense cold, caused by rapid evapo- 

 ration. A number of Larks kept rising from before my feet, 

 one after the other, as I walked along, and then lighting again 

 close before me. I slackened my pace and walked slowly, to 

 observe their conduct on the ground; for I said, "what a night 

 you will have of it here, my small friends, when I am snug 

 in bed ! If I come back before sunrise shall I find you all 

 frozen to the ground ? What hinders you to be so even now, 

 — why are your breasts not already fast bound to that spark- 

 ling icy soil among the stubble ? How is it, even if you sleep 

 standing, that your feet are not frozen fast?" I then be- 

 thought me of the claws or nails upon each toe, which are 

 largely developed in the Lark, and permit only a partial con- 

 tact of the sole with the ground when the bird is at rest. 

 " But if you sleep standing, or rather in such a gale as this, 

 cowering, how is it that you are not blown away ?" Then 

 occurred to me the beautiful provision of the long, arched heel 

 extending out rearward, on the principle of a flying buttress to 



