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 well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but lies flat on it, upside down.

In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed, that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to work, but weapons wherewith to slay.  And these take tribute of the rest, not with their consent, but of right.

III

TAILS

The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope.  There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I cannot find that any philosopher has looked into.  Often and deeply have I been impressed with this.  For example, there is scarcely, in this world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different things and yet one.  Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all.  In the course of evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man.  What was their purpose and mission?  What place have they filled in the scheme of things?  In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail?