110 
INSECT DESTROYE11S—REPTILES. 
felling, in the forest he has reserved as a permanent source of 
supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which, like the 
dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm 
and his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of 
insects, and, with them, the species of birds which subsist prin¬ 
cipally upon them. Thus the fine, large, red-headed wood¬ 
pecker, Pious erytlirocejphalus , formerly very common in New 
England, has almost entirely disappeared from those States, 
since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his favorite vege¬ 
table food, are less abundant. 
There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclu¬ 
sively upon insects. The ant bear is strong enough to pull 
down the clay houses built by the species of termites that 
constitute his ordinary diet, and the curious ai-ai, a climbing 
quadruped of Madagascar—of which I believe only a single 
specimen, secured by Mr. Sandwith, has yet reached Europe— 
is provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough 
to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the 
worm which bored it. 
Reptiles. 
But perhaps the most formidable foes of the insect, and 
even of the small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon 
approaches the insect perched upon the twig of a tree, with an 
almost imperceptible slowness of motion, until, at the distance 
of a foot, he shoots out his long, slimy tongue, and rarely fails 
to secure the victim. Even the slow toad catches the swift 
and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm 
countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very 
essentially to the reduction of the insect population, which 
they both surprise in the winged state upon walls and trees, 
and consume as egg, worm, and chrysalis, in their earlier meta¬ 
morphoses. The serpents feed much upon insects, as well as 
upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also other 
snakes. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so 
universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by 
man, and perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed 
