The Sense of Smell in Birds 



swallowed and digested, when a second proffer of 

 it would be declined. 



A pied hornbill which I kept, however, showed 

 a keenly discriminating taste in butterflies — my 

 usual material for experiments when I lived in 

 India — and expressed the same by wiping the 

 objectionable kinds on the front of my shirt as 

 he sat on my wrist, and then finally rejecting 

 them. Now, this he must have done indepen- 

 dently of the sense of taste, because he only picked 

 up objects he was testing with the tip of his bill, 

 and in hornbills the end of the beak for some 

 distance is as dry and horny inside as it is out- 

 side, and the very short tongue is situated far 

 back. I conclude, therefore, that the bird formed 

 his judgments on the edibility of butterflies by 

 scent, this penetrating by the posterior nares at 

 the back of the mouth ; and I may mention that 

 he rejected cigar-ends in just the same way, after 

 a preliminary pinch with the tip of the bill. 



Monsieur G. Rogeron, in his work on ducks, 

 incidentally gives a particularly interesting in- 

 stance of what certainly appears to be acute 

 scent in a bird. The creature in question, a 

 much-petted jackdaw, was very fond both of salt 

 and of sugar, but, while using the former with dis- 

 cretion, as might have been expected, he would 

 recklessly cram his bill with the latter substance. 

 Attempts were often made to play a practical 



49 d 



