1922.] Se)ise of Smell possessed hij Birds. 235 



knew so well, " that Ravens are attracted to a house where 



a corpse is lying led by some subtle sense beyond the 



senses o£ mere man to comprehend'' *. 



Charles St. John, another good Scotch naturalist, who 

 lived farther north than shepherd Hogg, too careful to 

 commit himself on the question of scent, is content with the 

 remark that " the instinct of the Raven in discovering dead 

 bodies of large animals is wonderful and very difficult to 

 understand " t> but he evidently does not altogether discard 

 the olfactory theory. 



Robert Dunn considered that the Raven's acuteness must 

 be due to scent. " It possesses the sense of smell in an 

 exquisite degree of perfection" J is his verdict, and that is 

 what most Shetlanders seem to have thought about the 

 Raven. 



But altliouo;h the Raven is so clever in discerning; the 

 whereabouts of food, observers are agreed that it displays no 

 particular skill in the discovery of danger, if that ihinger be 

 not visible and of this the present writer has had personal 

 experience more than once. Dr. R. M. Strong, of Chicago, 

 who has taken up the scent question from an anatomical 

 point of view, and worked it more effectually than anyone, 

 finds the olfactory lobes and nerves in all the Crow tribe to 

 be surprisingly minute, which is curious. Dr. Strong's 

 figure of the Raven's lobe exhibits this deficiencv. and the 

 same conditions prevailed in all the Corvidce material at his 

 disposal (2). 



2. Rook. — In testing the use and operation of scent, a 

 good example to take is the Rook [Corvus frur/ilegus), and 

 observe how one of these sagacious birds goes to work when 

 he is hungry. The Rook does not forget that he is endowed 

 with sharp sight, but nature teaches him to make use of his 

 nostrils also to indicate where a meal lies, nor does it signify 

 to him that those nostrils are often covered with bristles. 



* ' Birds of Omen in Slietland,' p. 10, 



t * Natural History and Sport in Moray,' p. 47. 



I 'Ornithologists' Guide to Orkney and Shetland,' 18.'J7, p. til. 



