i8S2.] 
Animals and their Diet. 
583 
but the so-called fruit-eating bats — the Pteropidae or flying 
foxes — although provided with a complex 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 phy- 
tophagous. 
Of the three divisions of the great order of the Ungulata, 
two — the Solidungula and Ruminantia — are, as far as we 
know, stricft vegetarians ; but among the Pachydermata we 
find the swine, which may be regarded as the most typically 
omnivorous mammals, and the hippopotamus. All the spe- 
cies of swine are eager for animal food. When grubbing in 
the earth they snap up rats, mice, snakes, inserts, &c., 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 
rattlesnake, and the common English pig often contrives 
to catch and eat up domestic poultry which stray into his 
stye. 
Among the birds we find a very similar state of things. 
The number of purely phytophagous species is relatively 
smaller, that of the exclusively zoophagous larger, and that 
of the forms recognised as omnivorous is increasing as our 
knowledge of their habits extends. Who, for instance, 
would, either from the morphology or from the general pro- 
pensities 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” (Gulielmia speciosa), 
and “ come in quarrelsome 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 efficient destroyer of young death-snakes. Hence the 
way in which it is shot down by certain blundering sports- 
men in India is nothing short of a public calamity. The 
pheasant is such an eager devourer of wireworms, grass- 
hoppers, 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, fieldfare, and their 
allies — occasionally evince predatory habits, especially in 
severe weather. The most purely phytophagous birds are 
the finches (many of which, however, feed their young upon 
inserts) and the doves. 
