268 Office of the Gland 



it be applied when the bird is alive, or whether it be applied 

 after the bird is dead. 



His reverence further remarks: " I very much doubt whe- 

 ther the objector (meaning me) has ever actually seen a bird 

 catch one of these famous insects with its bill." Had the 

 reverend pastor dissected as many birds and beasts as I have 

 done, and attended as much to their habits, he would not have 

 many doubts on this point. In dissecting his birds, he would 

 have seen that many of them were much infested with lice; 

 and he would have been fully convinced that birds do free 

 themselves from these lice through the instrumentality of the 

 bill, by finding the swallowed insects on dissection ; unless, 

 indeed, he gravely came to the conclusion, that the lice had 

 voluntarily entered the body at the other end. I myself have 

 actually swarmed with ornithological lice; for, after applying 

 the alcohol and sublimate to the skin of the bird which I was 

 dissecting, they would take the alarm, and, passing up my 

 sleeves, would be in my hair in a trice. After finishing the 

 bird, I used to take to the river; and there I started the little 

 fugitives into the stream, by scrubbing my head and body with 

 a lemon. I was never put much out of the way on these 

 occasions ; for I knew by experience that ornithological lice 

 cannot thrive, or exist even for a few days, on the human 

 body. Monkeys catch and eat their own fleas. Birds and 

 negroes catch and eat their own lice. All this I have wit- 

 nessed times out of number. 



In another part of his paper, the Rev. F. O. Morris re- 

 marks, that the " a priori argument is certainly in our favour." 

 I have nothing to do with "a priori ;" my business in this 

 interesting investigation lies a posteriori, as the position of 

 the gland evidently shows. But to the point. Some months 

 ago, after a long search, I procured an uncommonly fine fowl 

 without a rump. She is here now, at liberty to follow nature's 

 course, on the island where I live. I have given her for a 

 companion a fowl with a rump, and have introduced to their 

 acquaintance a noble male Malay, in order to see how the 

 young will be provided for in the nether extremity. These 

 birds are always in sight of the windows, to which they come 

 to be fed. They are for ever applying their beaks to their 

 feathers; and there is never the slightest difference or change 

 to be perceived in the appearance of the feathers of the hen 

 with a rump, when compared with those of the hen without a 

 rump. In a word, the feathers of both birds are quite per- 

 fect. I invite any naturalist to examine their plumage, or 

 their feathers separately, with a powerful magnifying glass; 

 and, if he can perceive the least alteration in the state of the 



