The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-04-21
:for tbe CHILDREN.
Living Lunch-Baskets.

OF course it is not at all surprising
that you should carry your lunch with
you when you are going to be away
from home all day, but think of an ami
NAL doing such thing!
There is the camel, for instance.
Everybody knows that it carries its
drinking water with it, but it does
more; it carries its lunch, too. That
hump on the came's back is not cur
vature of the spine, as it may seem,
but mass of fatty material. That
hump, in fact, is the camel's lunch
basket
When well-fed, healthy camel starts
out on 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 a de-
cidedly uncomfortable way of getting a
meal, and very likely the camel would
rather go hungry than do that. In
some way the hump is gradually alb
sorbed, and for a long time after the
camel has been unable to find anything
to eat, it can get along very comfort
ably on what its hump supplies it with.
! By-and-by, of course, the hump is used
up, and then the camel will starve as
quickly as any other animal,
A great deal more like a genuine
lunch-basket is the bag the pelican car
ries its food in. The pelican is about
as ungainly and odd bird as can be
found, and yet Is a very interesting
one. 1t has great, webbed feet, short
legs, big body, huge wings and an enor-
nous head.
Its head is mostly bill, and on the
under part of the bill is fabby 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 alights 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 Amer.
lean monkeys which have curious little
lunch-baskets in their cheeks. Every
body must have seen monkeys stufiing
and stufling food into their mouths, I'M
til 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 meal. Nor do the full cheeks in
terfere at all with the chewing of the
monkeys any more than if the pockets
were outside 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 pouch which looks
very much like kid glove finger 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
other similar animals have still another
way of laying in supply of food. They
pllo ol grass anu lcdNco anu o"dlloW
them without chewing at all. That food
goes into special stomach, there tC
stay until it is wanted. When the ami
NAL is ready for it, a ball Of food is
made up in the first stomach and sent
up into the animals mouth. That bal
is just a mouthful, and the animal car
chew it comfortably. After it is cheweC
and swallowed it goes into the proper
stomach, and is digested. Eating il
that way is called Illuminating. job,
II. CoryeU, in Harper's Young People.