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.
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.
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.