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The dearth of insectivorous birds seriously affects the cultivation of a soil naturally bounteous to excess. The narrow gorges in which terraced "patch cultivation," is so successful, offer no temptations to a man with the world before him. The larger areas require labour, and labour is not to be had.
This fact made him doubt whether the Amphitherium might not be an insectivorous placental, although it offered some points of approximation in its osteology to the marsupials, especially to the Myrmecobius, a small insectivorous quadruped of Australia, which has nine molars on each side of the lower jaw, besides a canine and three incisors. Phascolotherium Bucklandi, Broderip, sp. a.
Fifty-five species of Warblers inhabit North America. These birds are insectivorous in their feeding habits, which of course also means that they are migratory. A partial exception to the rule is found in the common Myrtle Warbler. Although in winter these birds range south to Panama, many remain as far north as New Jersey, Kansas, and the Ohio Valley.
His publications on the effects of domestication in plants and animals, on the influence of cross-fertilisation, on flowers as organs for effecting such fertilisation, on insectivorous plants, on the motions of plants, pointed out the routes of exploration which have since been followed by hosts of inquirers, to the great profit of science.
"Some think that they were covered with scales, but I am of the opinion that they had a horny hide, with a ridge of hair running down their backs in which opinion I am sustained by More's account. The smaller kinds were undoubtedly insectivorous, but the larger ones must have been carnivorous, and probably fed largely on fish."
A great many of them must perish of hunger, or be reduced to the necessity of feeding on the berries of the Viburnum and Juniper, should they be overtaken by an extensive and enduring snow that cuts off their journey of emigration. The Woodpeckers and their allied species, though insectivorous, are not thus affected by the winter.
But they were not the sole occupants of this corner of the Common; other insectivorous species had territories there also amongst which were Whitethroats, Grasshopper-Warblers, Willow-Warblers, Whinchats, Stonechats, Meadow-Pipits, Tree-Pipits, and Skylarks.
Both sexes of some species are beautifully coloured; and as these insects emit an extremely nauseous odour, their conspicuous colours may serve as a signal that they are unpalatable to insectivorous animals. In some few cases their colours appear to be directly protective: thus Prof.
It is a fish, for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land animal, for it resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian, for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal, for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian, for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when there isn't, doesn't.
As to the Drosera, the Dionaea, and insectivorous plants in general, they are fed by their roots, like other plants; they too fix, by their green parts, the carbon of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere. Their faculty of capturing, absorbing and digesting insects must have arisen late, in quite exceptional cases where the soil was too poor to furnish sufficient nourishment.
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