184 Strong, Habits of the Herring Gull. [April 



down to the water, and holding it under the surface shook its head 

 from side to side violently 'sozzeling' the meat about for several 

 seconds. It was then taken back to the wharf, laid down and 

 inspected, and carefully sampled; this time, however, it was not 

 bolted as at first but held for a moment in the mouth and rejected, 

 and carried back to the water where it was even more roughly 

 laundered. This operation was repeated several times and the 

 piece of fish, which must have weighed four ounces at the outset, 

 was reduced to half that size before it reached a state of freshness 

 that suited the palate of the gull." 



4. Other Reactions. — It is generally known that birds have a 

 special development of nerves and endings of general sensation 

 about the mouth with large trigeminal nerves for the sense organs 

 involved. It is consequently reasonable to expect that my gulls 

 when suspiciously manipulating food of uncertain palatableness em- 

 ploy their general sensation to a large extent. We do not know to 

 how great an extent general sensation and the taste sense are used 

 relatively by birds, but such information as is available indicates 

 that the former plays the larger part. It has been shown by 

 Botezat ^ for the birds which he studied that taste endings occur 

 only in the back part of the mouth cavity and especially at the en- 

 trance to the gullet. In some birds they were also found at the 

 base of the tongue, but they were never numerous. 



On p. 181 of this paper, I described the behavior of one of my gulls 

 when it started to eat liver which had been lying in solutions of 

 table salt for a few moments. The piece of liver was manipulated 

 in the front part of the mouth at the tip of the beak by the appar- 

 ently suspicious bird. No avoiding reactions resulted and the 

 food was often swallowed. Such a result suggests that the region of 

 the mouth where tactile endings occur is first used in testing food. 

 It is quite probable that the salt solution adhering to the piece of 

 liver did not stimulate the tactile endings of the bird in the experi- 

 ment and so was swallowed with a consequent strong stimulation of 

 taste endings as the food slipped into the gullet. I have made 

 similar observations on this behavior of my gulls when given un- 

 certain food, on a number of occasions. It is not improbable that 



1 Botezat, E. Die Nervenendapparate in den Miindteilen der Vogel und die 

 einheitliclie Endigungsweise dei peripheren Nerven bei den Wirbeltieren. Zeitschr. 

 f. wiss. Zool. Bd. 84, 1906, s. 205-360. 



