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LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS. 
Peregrine Falcon is said to pluck, to disjoint, and to carve 
its prey with as clean a cut and as prompt a skill as the 
most accomplished “ table-anatomist” could display. In 
the Woodpeckers, which dig out their food and excavate 
their dwellings from the solid timber of trees, the beak is 
an effective chisel. In the Snipe and Woodcock it is a 
long and slender probe, furnished at the tip with copious 
nerves of sensation, for feeling in the deep earth of bogs 
and marshes. In the Parrots it is a climbing hook, a sort 
of third foot (or rather hand) as well as a fruit-knife. In 
the Ducks it is a pair of flat spoons, for scooping up the 
slush of ponds ; and in the Gannet it is a strong and sharp 
fi sh-spear. 
Versatile as is the beak in different tribes of birds, it no- 
where performs a proper masticating function; it may 
divide flesh; it may crack a nut, and, with the assistance 
of the tongue, shell it ; it may separato the grain from the 
husk, as we see the Goldfinch and Canary constantly do 
with their hempseed ; but the nearest approach to a chew- 
ing action that we at this moment recollect, is the bruising 
down of hard seeds by means of a knob in the middle of 
the palate, as in the Buntings ( Emberisadce ). Tiie conse- 
<] uence of this general absence of masticating power is, that 
