Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1900-01-15
BIRDS WITH BILLS OF STEEL.
New Guinea Cockatoos Crack Hardest
 Nuts with Ease.

Nuts with Ease.
 "A few New Guinea cockatoos, a rare species in this latitude, have been brought to Chicago recently and have created much interest by their odd ap- pearance and actions They are as large as pheasants and jet black in color. The bird is remarkable for it's immensely strong bill and the clever manner in which 1t is used. The bill is as hard as steel and the upper part has a deep notch in it. The favorite food of this eoekatoe is the kernel of the canary nut, but there is wonderful ingenuity required to get at 1t, for the nut is something like brazil nut. but it is ten times as hard. h fact. 1t requires the blow of heavy hammer to crack it. 1t is quite smooth and somewhat triangular in shape The cocAatoo might throw the nut down, but it would not break, or 1t might hold it in it's claws like the parrots usually do with their food. and at tempt to crush it, but the smoothness of the nut would cause it to fly out of the beak. Nature appears to have given the possessor of the wonderful bill some intelligence to direct it's powers. for the cockatoo takes one of the nuts edgewise in its bill and by carving motion of it's sharp lower beak makes small notch on it. This done, the bird takes hold Of the nut with it's claws, and, biting off a piece of leaf, retains it in the deep notch of the upper part of the bill Then the nut is seized between the upper and lower parts of the bill and is prevented from slipping by the peculiar texture of the leaf A sharp nip or two breaks off tiny piece of the shell of the nut. The bird then seizes the nut in it's claws and pokes the long. sharp point Of it's bill into the hole and picks out the kernel bit by bit. The cockatoo has very long tongue, which collects each morsel as it is broken off by the bill This is a wonderful process. for it is quite clear that without the leaf nothing could be done. and it proves how certain structures in birds are made to destroy certain parts of plants Chicago Chronicle.
 Antique PiAnos.
 Frarnlkfort-on-the-M Correspond ence of the Chicago Record. There is very interesting collection of old pianos in the Roman museum at Hildee sheim, Germany. Dating all the way from the end of the seventeenth cen tury, the collection exhibits in a very instructive way the primitive origin of piano manufacture, and gives one an idea of the simple instruments used by our greatest music composers. The oldest instrument on exhibition is small clavichord of the seventeenth century, possessing thirty-four tones with tWenty-eight two-choral bound strings. Another of equal antiquarian value has four full octaves-a one- chord Italian spinet, built at an angle and possessing a rich and beautiful tone for singing aecompaniments. The strings are rifted with pointed crow quills. Both instruments date from the time of Handel, Bach and Chuck One instrument was made in the first half of the eighteenth century, and is a bound claviehord of four and one- half octaves, fifty-eight tones and forty strings. There is also an instrument from the second half of the last cen. tury which possesses five and one- fourth octaves. The last two are sup piled with strings tipped with brass, and their immediate followers were the hammer pianos of 1760, used at the time by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and even by Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, Chopin. and Franz Liszt during their youth.
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