TOUCHES OF NATURE 61 
you cannot catch an animal’s eye; he looks at you, 
but not into your eye. The dog directs his gaze 
toward your face, but, for aught you can tell, it 
centres upon your mouth or nose. The same with 
your horse or cow. ‘Their eye is vague and in- 
definite. 
Not so with the birds. The bird has the human 
eye in its clearness, its power, and its supremacy 
over the other senses. How acute their sense of 
smell may be is uncertain; their hearing is sharp 
enough, but their vision is the most remarkable, 
A crow or a hawk, or any of the larger birds, will 
not mistake you for a stump or rock, stand you 
never so still amid the bushes. But they cannot 
separate you from your horse or team. A hawk 
reads a man on horseback as one animal, and reads 
it as a horse. None of the sharp-scented animals 
could be thus deceived. 
The bird has man’s brain also in its size. The 
brain of a song-bird is even much larger in propor- 
tion than that of the greatest human monarch, and 
its life is correspondingly intense and high-strung. 
But the bird’s eye is superficial. It is on the out- 
side of his head. It is round, that it may take in 
a full circle at a glance. 
All the quadrupeds emphasize their direct for- 
ward gaze by a corresponding movement of the ears, 
as if to supplement and aid one sense with another. 
But man’s eye seldom needs the confirmation of his 
ear, while it is so set, and his head so poised, that 
his look is forcible and pointed without being thus 
seconded. 
