FOR EATING PURPOSES 17 



partnership with the wife of its youth ; no beast 

 builds itself a summer-house and decks it with 

 feathers and bright shells. A beast is a grovelling 

 denizen of the earth ; a bird is a free citizen of the 

 air. And who can say that there is not a connection 

 between this difference and other developments ? 

 The beast, thinking only of its appetites, has evolved 

 a delicate nose, a discriminating palate, three kinds 

 of teeth to cut, tear, and grind its food, salivary 

 glands to moisten the same, and a perfected apparatus 

 of digestion. 



The bird, occupied with thoughts of love and 

 beauty, with " fields, or waves, or mountains " and 

 " shapes of sky or plain," has made little advance 

 in the art and instruments of good living. It 

 swallows its food whole, scarcely knowing the taste 

 of it, and a pair of forceps for picking it up, tipped 

 and cased with horn, is the whole of its dining 

 furniture. For the bill of a bird, primarily and 

 essentially, is that and nothing else. In the chickens 

 and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and 

 the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky- 

 birds, you may see it in its simplicity. The size and 

 shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a 

 Scotch axe ; some are short and stout and have a 

 sharp edge for shelling seeds ; some are longer and 

 fine-pointed, for picking worms and caterpillars out 

 of their hiding-places ; some a little hooked at their 

 points, and one, that of the crossbill, with points 

 crossed for picking the small seeds out of fir-cones ; 



