202 



3. Choice of 

 food. 



4. External 

 fenfes. 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



As animals do not afford examples of filicide, he could only 

 obtain proofs of this fuppofition in the human race, and feve- 

 ral cafes of voluntary fuicide in which this part of the brain 

 was difordered, have induced him to confider it as the organ 

 of this faculty ; he does not however admit it as indifputably 

 eftabliflied, but wails for further examples to confirm the fad. 



3. Organ of the choice of Food. 

 The author fuppofes the organs for the choice of food to be 

 placed in the quadrijumal tubercles, the anterior of which 

 are greater in carnivorous animals, the poflerior developed 

 in the herbivoran, but are of equal lize in the omnivorous 

 animals. 



4. Cerebral Organs of the external Senfes. 

 The middle part of the bafe of the brain is appropriated to 

 the external fenfes. It is the region from which thofe nerves 

 iflue which are diftributed into the organs of thofe fenfes. 



(To he continued.) 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS, ACCOUNT OF BOOKS, for. 



Account of the Ventriloquifm, exhibited by M. Fitz-James. 



Account of A HE reader will doubtlefs recollect fome curious facts and 

 ventriloquifm. obfervations on ventriloquifm by Mr. Gough in our fecond 

 volume, page 125. That acute philofopher, reafoning from 

 a few facts and ftating the want of more, appears inclined to 

 adopt the theory that the art of ventriloquifm confifts in caufing 

 the voice to iffue from the mouth only, and uttering it in fuch 

 a direction, that the hearer may receive the impreffion of 

 fome echo with confiderably more force than he receives the 

 original found. He gives inftances of this procefs, particu- 

 larly where the found of a ring of bells appears to change its 

 direction accordingly, as the hearer by moving along, re- 

 ceives it from different reflecting furfaces, while the original 

 found is interrupted by fome obftacle. Whether the echos in 

 a room be at all likely to be fo managed would admit of con- 

 fiderable doubt ; and without having witneffed any exhibition 

 of this kind in the leaft to be compared with the furprizing 

 narratives we occafionally hear, I have always been ftrongly 



difpofed 



