200 The Bird 



of a rapacious hawk with the thin-templed head of a 

 timid heron and say, ''phrenologically/' in the first we 

 have the bump of combativeness well developed, analo- 

 gous to a prize-fighter; in the second case, timidity is 

 prominent! But unfortunately, characteristics such as 

 these are compound, and made up of many simple fac- 

 tors, the synthesis of which is not confined to any par- 

 ticular ''bump." 



At the first sight of the bird's brain we are struck 

 with the very great size of the two larger masses of brain- 

 matter — cerebral hemispheres these are called. It is in 

 these that the higher faculties reside, and when these are 

 destroyed, all knowledge, all power of voluntary move- 

 ment passes from the bird. These great brain-halves 

 are much larger than in the brain of a reptile, in fact the 

 cerebral hemispheres, set deep in the great buttressed 

 skull of a full-grown crocodile, are no larger than those 

 of the duck which he snaps up. Not only this, but in 

 the days of the Archceopteryx (which had a typical bird- 

 brain), the monster Dinosaur, Triceratops, 25 feet long, 

 had, in its 6 feet of skull, a brain proportionately only 

 one tenth as large as that of a modern crocodile! When 

 compared with a mammal there is seen to be a conspicu- 

 ous difference, since the outer surface is perfectly smooth 

 in birds, but is wound about in convolutions in the higher 

 four-footed animals. This latter condition is said to indi- 

 cate a greater degree of intelligence, but when we look 

 at the brain of a young musk-ox or walrus and find convo- 

 lutions as deep as those of a five-j^ear-old child, and when 

 we compare the wonderfully varied life of birds, and 



