Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/41

 savage, misanthropical, depressed—what you will of that sort. Let him but turn and face you—he can't help a genial grin. All done by the versatile neck, you observe, which gives the head its position.

Man, instigated by woman, has a habit of pulling out the camel-gander's tail. This ruins the appearance of the site of that tail, without commensurately improving the head whereunto the tail is transplanted—an unprofitable game of heads and tails, wherein tails lose and heads don't win. Even the not over clever ostrich knows better than to wear those feathers on the wrong end. Perhaps he knows that he is enough of a fool already.

There is a deal of hidden interest about the ostrich's neck. It is the cleverest piece of an ostrich—unless you count his stomach; and even in the triumphs of the stomach the neck takes a great share. When a camel-goose lunches off a box of dominoes, or a sack of nails, or a basketful of broken bottles, there is quite as much credit in the feat due to the neck as to the stomach; with anybody else all the difficulties of that lunch would begin with the neck—even a thicker neck. Parenthetically, one remembers that the ostrich's neck is not always thin. Catch Atkinson here in a roaring soliloquy, and you shall see his red neck distended as a bladder, with a mighty grumbling and grunting. This by the way. The neck makes nothing of the domino difficulty, or the tenpenny nail difficulty, or the door-knob difficulty, or the broken bottle difficulty—which are not difficulties to the camel-goose. On the contrary, the neck revels in them and keeps the dainties as long as possible. Give Pontius Pilate, or Atkinson—I am quite impartial—an apple. When he swallows it you shall see it, in a bulge, pass along and round his neck; down it goes and backward, in a gradual curve, until it disappears among the feathers—corkscrews, in fact. Observe, I recommend an apple for this demonstration. Dominoes and clinkers are all very well, but they rattle about inside, and disturb the visitors; and with an apple you will the more plainly observe that corkscrew.

Not satisfied, you perceive, with enjoying his domino or his doorknob all the way along that immense neck, the camel-gander must needs indulge in a spiral gullet. It is mere gluttony. Especially is it wicked of Atkinson, who has already the longest bird-neck in all these gardens. Look at the necks of all the cursores. The poor little wingless kiwi, with a mere nothing of a neck—for a cursore. He does without a spiral gullet. The festive cassowary—which, by-the-bye, doesn't abound—or exist on the plains of Timbuctoo, as the rhyme says—the festive cassowary, I say, wears his gullet plain. The rusty rhea takes things below with perfect directness. The