CHAPTER XXIV.

MORE ABOUT THE TOOLS OF ANIMALS.

[Sidenote: The saw-fly.]

Insects have various tools or instruments. There is a fly called the saw-fly, because it really has a saw. It is a very nice one, much nicer than any saw that man ever made. The fly uses the saw to make a place to put its eggs, where they will be secure. And what is very curious, it has a sort of glue with which it fastens the eggs in their place.

[Sidenote: The bee that cuts leaves so curiously.]

There are some insects that have cutting instruments, which will cut as well as you can with scissors, if not better. There is a bee that is remarkable in this respect. It has also a boring tool. Its nest is commonly in old, half-decayed wood. It clears out a space in it with its boring instrument; it then sets itself to work with its cutting instrument to cut out pieces of leaves to line the nest and make the cells in it. These are cut of different shapes, as they are needed, as you may see in the next engraving. Below the leaves you see the nest represented. It is opened by taking off some of the wood, and there you see the lining of leaves. Great pains is taken by the bees in getting each piece of leaf of the right shape to fit well, and the pieces are very nicely fastened together.[A2]

[Footnote A2: A more full account of the operations of this little animal you can find in a book published by Harper and brothers, entitled Natural History, by Uncle Philip, which I recommend to my young readers as a very interesting book about animals.]

There are some animals that have machinery for making things. All the silk that is used in the world is made by worms. The silk-worm has a regular set of machinery for spinning silk. It winds it up as it spins it. Then man unwinds it, and makes a great variety of beautiful fabrics with this silk thread.

[Sidenote: The spinning machinery of the silk-worm and the spider.]

The spinning machinery of the spider is much finer than that of the silk-worm. The thread which he spins is made up of a multitude of threads, each one of these coming out from an exceedingly small hole in the spider’s body. You know that there is a large number of fibres or threads in a rope. So it is with the spider’s rope, for his thread that you see, small as it is, is a rope to him. It is a rope that he walks on like a rope-dancer; and you may sometimes see him swinging upon it. Sometimes, too, he lets himself down from some height, spinning the rope that holds him as he goes down. When he does this, his spinning machine must work very briskly.

[Sidenote: Paper-making of the wasp.]

The wasp has a paper factory in him. He makes his paper out of fibres of wood, which he picks off, I suppose, with his teeth, and gathers them into a bundle. He makes this into a soft pulp in some way; then, from this, he makes the paper with which he builds his nest. It is very much, you know, like the common brown paper that man makes. The wasps work in companies, and though each one can make but little paper, they all together make their nest in a very little time. The pulp from which they make their paper is very much like the pulp from which man makes paper, and which you may see any time in the large tubs or vats of a paper factory. This pulp is generally made from rags ground up fine, but lately wood has been much used. Perhaps the hint was taken from the wasps, who were the earliest paper-makers in the world.

[Sidenote: Teeth.]

Animals can not use knives and forks, as we do, in dividing up their food. They therefore have instruments given them which do this very well. Those long, sharp teeth that dogs, cats, tigers, etc., have, answer to tear to pieces the flesh they eat, as thoroughly as we can cut it up. We do not need such teeth, because with instruments contrived by man’s mind for his hands to use we cut up the food sufficiently.

[Sidenote: Pumps of some animals.]

I have told you that the elephant can draw up water into his trunk. His trunk is therefore like the tube with which we suck up water or any liquid. And it is like a pump too, for, as I shall show you in Part Third, water is raised in the pump just as it is in a tube when we suck through it. It is with a pump something like the elephant’s that many insects get the honey from the flowers. This pump is called a proboscis. It is with such an instrument that the musquito sucks up your blood. At the end of his pump he has something with which he pierces a hole in your skin, and then he pumps your blood up into his stomach. In some insects the proboscis is very long, as you see here. This is hollow, and with it the insect sucks up the honey from very deep flowers, without being obliged to go to the bottom of them.

[Sidenote: The proboscis in some insects.]

The proboscis is commonly coiled up when it is not in use. Here is the proboscis of a butterfly coiled up. The two long things above it are feelers.

[Sidenote: The proboscis of the humming-bird.]

The tongue of the humming-bird is really a proboscis, and a very curious one it is too. It has two tubes alongside of each other, like the two barrels of a double-barreled gun. At the tip of the tongue these tubes are a little separated, and their ends are shaped like spoons. The honey is spooned up, as we may say, and then it is drawn into the mouth through the long tubes of the tongue. But the bird uses its tongue in another way. It catches insects with it, for it lives on these as well as on honey. It does it in this way: the two spoons grasp the insect like a pair of tongs, and the tongue, bending, puts it into the bird’s mouth. The tongue, then, of the humming-bird is not merely one instrument, but it contains several instruments together--two pumps, two spoons, and a pair of tongs.

[Sidenote: Cat’s tongue a curry-comb.]

The tongue of a cat is a singular instrument. It is her curry-comb. For this purpose it is rough, as you will find if you feel it. When she cleans herself so industriously, she gets off the dirt and smooths her coat just as the hostler cleans and smooths the horse’s coat with the curry-comb. Her head she can not reach with her tongue, and so she has to make her fore paws answer the purpose instead.

[Sidenote: How the heron catches fish.]

There are some birds that live on fishes. They have instruments, therefore, purposely for catching them. The heron is a bird of this kind. He manages in this way: when the light is dim, either at dawn or when there is moonlight, it is his time for going a fishing. He will stand, as you see him here, in shallow water, so stiff and so still that he might be mistaken for a stump of a tree or something else. He is looking steadily and patiently down into the water, and the moment a fish comes along, down goes his sharp bill, and off he flies to his nest with his prey. The plumes of this singular bird are beautiful, and are very highly prized as ornaments.

There is one bird that lives chiefly on oysters. It has a bill, therefore, with which it can open an oyster-shell as skillfully as an oysterman can with his knife.

[Sidenote: The tailor-bird.]

Some birds can sew very well with their beaks and feet. There is one bird that sews so well that it is called the tailor bird. Here is its nest hid in leaves which it has sewed together. It does this with thread which it makes itself. It gets cotton from the cotton-plant, and with its long, delicate bill and little feet, spins it into a thread. It then pierces the holes through the leaves with its bill, and, passing the thread through the holes, sews them together. I believe that in getting the thread through the holes it uses both its bill and its feet.

[Sidenote: The wingless bird.]

Here is a very strange-looking bird. It has no wings. It has a very long bill, which it uses in gathering its food, which consists of snails, insects, and worms. He uses his bill in another way. He often, in resting, places the tip of his bill on the ground, and thus makes the same use of his bill that an old man does of his cane when he stands leaning upon it.

[Sidenote: The fish that shoots insects with a squirt-gun.]

There is a fish that has a singular instrument. It is a squirt-gun for shooting insects. It can shoot them not only when they are still, but when they are flying. It watches them as they are flying over the water, and hits one of them, whenever it can get a chance, with a fine stream of water from its little gun. The insect, stunned with the blow, falls into the water, and the fish eats it.

I could give you a great many more examples of the different tools that we find in animals, but these are sufficient. You can observe other examples yourselves as you look at different animals.

_Questions._--What is said about the saw-fly? Tell about the boring and cutting instruments of a certain kind of bee. What is said about silk-worms? What about spiders? What about wasps? Why do some animals have such long, sharp teeth? What kind of machine is an elephant’s trunk? What is the proboscis of an insect? Tell about the tongue of the humming-bird. How many instruments are there together in his tongue? What is said about the cat’s tongue? Tell about the heron. Tell about the bird that lives on oysters. What is told about the tailor-bird? Tell about the bird that has no wings. Tell about the fish that shoots insects with water.