VI FORM AND FUNCTION 117 



of the muscles of wings, tail, neck, and beak — for an 

 unerring dart and snap at the victim, he has proved 

 that he possesses nerves of the first order.' 



The Brain. 



The subject is a very difficult one. It is impossible 

 as yet to impart interest to it by allotting to each part 

 of the brain its special function. Some progress is 

 being made in this by methods of study that arc 

 scientific and dependable, but, at the same time, slow 

 and laborious. It is hardly necessary to say that 

 phrenology which mapped out the skull into pro- 

 vinces, like an old and well-known country, not like 

 a half-explored continent, has gone to the limbo where 

 all systems founded on mere guesswork must go. 



If a bird's fragile skull be removed carefully, so 

 as to leave the brain uninjured, the posterior part, 

 the cerebellum (cb, Fig. 30), will be easily dis- 

 tinguished ; in contact with it at their hinder ends are 

 two large bodies that make up nearly the whole of the 

 top of the brain. These are the cerebral hemispheres, 

 the larger development of which makes a bird's brain so 

 different from a reptile's (c/i). In them all the higher 

 faculties reside. If they are severely- injured or re- 

 moved, there is no more intelligence, memory, or 

 voluntary movement. There is only what is called 

 reflex action such as is called forth in a hydra or a 

 coral animal when food touches its tentacles ; they close 

 upon it without consciousness or intention on the 



1 See Coues' Field and General Ornithology, p. 257 and 

 onward. 



