baleen, or whalebone, ranged in close array along the upper jaw. The tongue of the species is very thick, fleshy, soft, fat, and spongy, and occupies a large portion of the cavity of the mouth; it sometimes measures upwards of twenty feet in length, and eight or nine in width; its mobility is very restricted, the tip not being free; nevertheless it is probably from some peculiar sensibility which it possesses, that the animal knows when to strain the water off, and swallow the myriads ingulfed.

So far among mammalia have we shown in what portions of the frame the sense of touch, and often of prehension also, are seated, when removed by the necessities of structural modifications, from the hand or anterior extremity. We have next to investigate in what degree birds possess this sense, and where it is seated in these feather-clad animals.

It does not appear to us that birds generally possess the sense of touch in anything like perfection. Sight and hearing are their most exalted senses, and to these they especially trust. They test nothing by feeling, nor is there need that they should, though to this rule there are certain exceptions. Birds,

such as the woodcock and snipe, which plunge their beaks into the ooze in quest of insects, have the sense of touch in great delicacy. In these birds the long beak is swollen, soft, and pulpy at the tip, where the skin is minutely dimpled, and supplied with a mesh of nerves, forming a tissue of high sensibility; it is decidedly by the sense of touch that the snipe, the woodcock, the ruff, the curlew, and other allied species, procure their food; if we look at the bony fabric of the beak cleared of the soft pulpy skin which covers it, we shall find the tip riddled with minute and closely-set orifices for the exit of the nerves and blood-vessels. There is another tribe of birds, in which the beak and tongue are endowed with a very refined degree of the sense of touch- -we mean the swans and ducks, and also the flamingo. In these birds the broad beak is adapted for groping in the mud; it is covered with a delicate leathery skin, and the edges are laminated, or furnished with closely-set transverse plates, acting as a strainer, and more developed in some species than in others. * In some spe

*They remind us of the plates of baleen in the whale; nor is the tongue of the whale, and the flamingo or duck, very dissimilar.

cies of the southern hemisphere, the edge of the upper mandible is furnished with a thin membranous skin projecting considerably on each side, adding thereby to the breadth of the bill. The skin covering the bill, especially about the tip and along the sides, and the additional membrane, in such species as possess it, are supplied very freely with multitudinous nerves (from the fifth pair,) which endow it with most acute discriminating sensibility. In accordance with this sensibility of the beak, the tongue, instead of being thin and horny, as is the case in so many birds, is large and fleshy, and furnished along its margin, and on other parts, with somewhat rigid and comblike appendages. It is abundantly supplied with nerves, and co-operates with the mandibles in the discrimination and the appropriation of its food. On looking at the skull of the common tame swan, now before us, we find the sides of the beak near the base, and the whole of the tip of the upper mandible, a middle line excepted, numerously perforated with orifices for the passage of nerves; and the tip of the lower mandible presents the same character. Those who have seen the duck probing and testing the mud, or watched the swan with his long

neck extended to the stretch, and buried in the water, the beak being at work in the oozy bed of the river, will feel convinced, on a moment's reflection, of the delicacy of discriminating sensibility which that organ must possess. Anatomy confirms the fact.

The woodpeckers constitute a group of birds in which the tongue is an essential agent in the acquisition of food. The tongue is long, flexible, capable of being protruded to a great distance, covered with viscid saliva, and armed with a horny tip, barbed on each side with minute spines directed backward. This instrument the woodpecker launches forth with great rapidity, inserting it into chinks and crevices where insects lodge, or into their cells and mazy retreats beneath the mouldering bark of trees, which the bird first lays open by strokes with its powerful beak; it catches them on the barbed and glutinous point, and draws them instantaneously into the mouth. The tongue of the woodpecker is at once a flexible sensitive probe, and an efficient agent in the acquisition of food. The same observation applies to the long worm-like tongue of the wryneck, which is covered with a glutinous secretion, and which the bird inserts into the crevices of the

bark of trees, in search of insects; ants are its favourite food, and at these it launches forth its tongue with wonderful rapidity, and also thrusts it into their retreats. We have frequently watched the wryneck, in captivity, dart forth its tongue and apply it to different substances presented as food, keeping it all the time in a state of rapid quivering.

The

The tongue of the humming-bird must also be regarded as a feeler or organ of touch; it is the instrument by which these gorgeous little birds obtain their food, and is governed in its movements by a peculiar muscular apparatus resembling that in the woodpecker. tongue itself is very long, and composed of two cylinders of a fibrous and muscular texture, which are united together somewhat like the barrels of a double-barrelled gun; but towards the tip these tubes become separated, and terminate each in a little spoon-like expansion, concave within and convex externally; and these blades, when the beak is inserted into the nectary of flowers, not only lick up the honey, but also seize upon small insects, which are instantaneously drawn into the mouth and swallowed.

In the toucan, the large but light bill, the internal part of which is composed of a delicate