st legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful
as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of
feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat
fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the
idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does
not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small
crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which abound in
brackish water; and it has an instrument for taking these which it knows
how to use. I kept flamingos once, and, after trying many things in
vain, offered them bran, or boiled rice, floating in water. Then they
dined, and I learned the construction and working of the most marvellous
of all bills. The lower jaw is deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn
in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe
with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue,
and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be
pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw
becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both
sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The
upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is
beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close
set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To
work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas,
draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the
lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with the tip of
the tongue and force the water out. It can only get out by passing
through the first strainers at the root of the tongue, then over the
palate, and so through the second strainers at the sides of the bill;
and all the solid matter it contained will remain in the mouth. The
sucking in and squirting out of the water is managed by the cheeks, or
rather by the cheek, for a flamingo has only one cheek, and that is
situated under the chin. When the bird is feeding you will see this
throbbing faster than the eye can follow it, while water squirts from
the sides of the mouth in a continuous stream. I should have said that
the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of
this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a
bucket into a we