The dormouse.
When a squirrel nibbles a nut to make a hole in it, he holds it between his two fore paws like hands. So also does the dormouse, which you see here.
The humming-bird’s bill.
The bill of a bird is used as its hand. It gathers with it its food to put into its crop. When you throw corn out to the hens, how fast they pick it up, and send it down into their crops to be well soaked! The humming-bird has a very long bill, and in it lies a long, slender, and very delicate tongue. As he poises himself in the air before a flower, his wings fluttering so quickly that you can not see them, he runs his bill into the bottom of the flower where the honey is, and puts his little long tongue into it.
The bill of a duck.
The bill of the duck is made in a peculiar way. You know that it gets its food under water in the mud. It can not see, therefore, what it gets. It has to work altogether by feeling, and it has nerves in its bill for this purpose. Here is a picture of its bill, showing the nerves branching out on it. You see, too, a row of pointed things all around the edge. They look like teeth, but they are not teeth. They are used by the duck in finding its food. It manages in this way: it thrusts its bill down, and as it takes it up it is full of mud. Now mixed with the mud are things which the duck lives on. The nerves tell the duck what is good, and it lets all the rest go out between the prickles. It is a sort of sifting operation, the nerves in the sieve taking good care that nothing good shall pass out.
The power of the elephant’s trunk and the variety of things it can do.
One of the most remarkable things used in place of a hand is the trunk of the elephant. The variety of uses to which the elephant puts this organ is very wonderful. It can strike very heavy blows with it. It can wrench off branches of trees, or even pull up trees by the roots, by winding its trunk around them to grasp them, as you see it is doing here. It is its arm with which it carries its young. It is amusing to see an old elephant carefully wind its trunk around a new-born elephant, and carry it gently along.