HUNTING — FISHING— WARS AND EXPEDITIONS 49 



carapaces, eating the soft parts. These facts have 

 been many times observed by Brehm and other trust- 

 worthy naturalists. It is even said that in Greece 

 every Lammergeyer chooses a rock on which he 

 always comes to execute the tortoises he has captured. 

 It was no doubt beneath one of these birds so occupied 

 that, according to the story, mischance conducted 

 /Eschylus. 



Neither the beak nor the claws of the Shrike or 

 Butcher-bird {Lanius excubitor) are strong enough to 

 enable him to tear his prey easily. When he is not 

 too driven by hunger he installs himself in a com- 

 fortable fashion for this carving process, places on a 

 thorn or on a pointed branch the victim he has made, 

 and when it is thus fixed easily devours it in threads. 



The Lanius collurio, an allied bird, uses this method 

 still more frequently. He even prepares a small 

 larder before feasting. One may thus see on a thorny 

 branch spitted side by side Coleoptera, crickets, grass- 

 hoppers, frogs, and even young birds, wliich he has 

 seized when they were in flight.^ (Pis'- 6.) 



Of all these well-attested facts that which perhaps 

 best shows how animals in certain circumstances may 

 take advantage of a foreign body to utilise the pro- 

 duct of the chase, is the following, the observation of 

 which is due to Parseval-Deschenes.^ He followed 

 during several hours an ant bearing a heavy burden. 

 On arriving at the foot of a little hillock the animal 

 was unable to mount with his load, and abandoned 

 it — a very extraordinary fact for one who knows the 



^ Naumann, Nalurgeschichle der Vigel Deulschlaiicls, etc., Stuttgart, 



1846-53- 



'^ Gralien de Semur, Tralle des erreurs et des prijugSs, Paris, 1848, 

 p. 70. 



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