Identifier: birdsnature511899chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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of ants, so as to catch largenumbers of the little insects on itssticky surface. Cats and their kind have a peculiar-ity in that instead of having cone-shaped papilla; their tongues arecovered with sharp spines of greatstrength. These are used in combin-^the fur and in scraping bones. Two characteristic accomplishmentsof man would not be his if it were notfor his versatile tongue; they are spit-ting and whistling. The drawing ofmilk in nursing is an act of the tongue,and the power of its muscles as wellas the complete control of its move-ments is an interesting provision ofnature. It is believed by some thatthe pleasures of the taste sense areconfined to such animals as suckletheir young. Tongues are rough because thepapilke. which in ordinary skin arehidden beneath the surface, come quitethrough and stand up like the villi ofthe digestive canal. The red color ofthe tongue is due to the fact that thepapilhe are so thinly covered thatthe blood circulating within showsthrough.
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THE MOUNTAIN LION. THIS is only one of the names bywhich the puma (Felis concolor)is known in the United States.He has different local names,such as tiger, cougar, catamount andpanther, or painter, as the backwoods-men entitle him, and silvery lion. The puma ranges the whole of boththe Americas from the Straits of Ma-gellan to where the increasing coldin the north of Canada blocks his pas-sage. Like many other large animals,however, the puma has retired beforethe advance of civilization, and in manyof the more thickly populated portionsof the United States a straggler, even,is rarely to be found. The haunts of the puma depend uponthe nature of the country. In sectionswell-wooded he decidedly prefers for-ests to plains; but his favorite spots areedges of forests and plains grown withvery high grass. He always selects forhis abode such spots as afford someshelter, in the vicinity of rocks whichhave caverns for secure concealment,and in which to bring forth his young.He spends the day sl

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