The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-04-03
LIVING LUNCH BASKETS.


Odd Ways Some Animals Have for Car
ryins Supplies of Food.
OF course it is not at all surprising
that you should carry your lunch with
you when you arc going to be away
from home ali day, but think of an
animal doing such thing
There is the camel, for instance,
Every body knows that it carries its
drinking water with it, but it does
more; it carries its lunch, too. That
hump on the camers back is not a
curvature of the spine, as it may seem,
but a mass of fatty material. That
hump, in fact, is the camel's lunch
basket. When a wcll-fed, healthy
camel starts out OH a journey across
the desert, its water pouch is full, and
its hump is big When water fails, the
camel has only to draw on its reservoir,
and when food is wanting, the hump is
called upon. Not that the camel helps
itself to bites of its hump. That would
be 4 decidedly uncomfortable way of
getting a meal, and very likely the
camel would rather 90 hungry than do
that. In some way the hump is grad
ually absorbed, and for long time
after the camel has been unable to find
any thing to eat it can get along very
comfortably on what its hump supplies
it with. By and by, of course, the
hump is used up, and then the camel
will starvc as quickly as any other ami
NAL
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lunch basket is the bag the pelican car
ries its food in. The pelican is about
as ungainly and odd a bird as can be
found, and yet is very interesting
one. 1t has great wcbbed feet, short
legs, big body, huge wings and an
enormous head. Its head is mostly bill,
and on the under part of the bill is n
tlabby bag made of tough skin. That
bag can stretch and stretch until it can
hold an incredible quantity of fish, for it
is in that bag that the pelican puts the
fish it catches for its food. When the
bag is full, the pelican rises heavily
from the sea, and with broad sweeps of
its great wings flaps slowly to the
shore, where it ahghts and prepares to
enjoy the meal it has earned. One by
one the still living fish are tossed into
the air, and come down head first into
the wide-opened mouth of the hungry
bird.
Then there are some of the South
American monkeys which have curious
little lunch baskets in their cheeks.
Every body must have seen monkeys
stuffing and stufling food into their
mouths until their cheeks were bulged
quite out of shape. 1t looks as if the
greedy little fellows were merely
examining their mouths full. The
truth is, many of the monkeys have
queer little pockets in their cheeks into
which they can stow enough food for a
meal. Nor do the full cheeks interfere
at all with the chewing of the monkeys
any more than if the pockets were out
side instead of inside of the mouth.
But there is little animal called the
pouched rat which has an odder way
than this of carrying its food. On
each side of its face is a pouch which
looks very much like kid glove fin
ger drawn in at one end These
pouches stick straight out from the
face, and can be made to hold large
supply of food
The COW and deer and sheep and
similar animals have still another way
of laying in supply of food. They
bite off grass and leaves and swallow
them without chewing at all. That
food goes into special stomach. there
to stay until it is wanted. When the
animal is ready for it, ball of the
food is made up in that first stomach,
and sent out into the animals mouth.
That ball is just mouthful, and the
animal can chew it com rtably. After
it is ehewed and swallowed it goes
into the proper stomach. and is digest
ed. Eating in that way is called ru-
minating John IL. COryeH, IN Harper'S
YOUNG PcODle