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 8 Bird -Lore tongue of the Penguin may be very serviceable for catching or holding small crustaceans and fishes. Before going farther it may be well to glance for a moment at the seven or eight little bones forming the hyoid, or framework on which the tongue is built, and to which are attached the muscles that move it. The two foremost of these little bones, often so closely THE HYOID OF THE PEWEE united as to appear one, are imbedded in the body of the tongue itself, together with the single bone to which they are attached, while the hindmost pair curl up around the back of the skull, and from the varying proportions of these bones we can tell something of the manner in which and extent to which the tongue is used. If the foremost bones are long the tongue is long, if they are stout the tongue is thick and fleshy, as in the Ducks, and if they are almost wanting, as in the Cormorants, then there is no tongue to speak of. The hindmost bones determine the extent to which the tongue can be protruded : if they are long the tongue is very extensile, if they are short it is but little so. In the Hummingbirds these epibran- chials, as they are called, run back over the skull, meet one another, and extend forward side by side to the very base of the bill. It might be thought that this marked the utmost limit of length at- tainable, but some of the Woodpeckers manage to exceed this, some- times, as in the Downy Woodpecker, by curling the ends of the THE SPEAR OF THE HAIRY WOODPECKER THE ARROW OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDER hyoid around the right eyeball, and sometimes, as in the Flicker, by letting the bones run forward into the nostril and thence to the tip of the bill. The Woodpeckers thus obtain the longest and most ex- tensible tongues found among birds, and, as these tongues are used