280 THE SENSORIAL FUNCTIONS. 



The primary use of this sense, the organ of which is 

 placed at the entrance of the alimentary canal, is evidently 

 to guide animals in the choice of their food, and to warn 

 them of the introduction of a noxious substance into the sto- 

 mach. With respect to the human species, this use has been, 

 in the present state of society, superseded by many acquired 

 tastes, which have supplanted those originally given to us 

 by nature: but in the inferior animals it still retains its pri- 

 mitive office, and is a sense of great importance to the safety 

 and welfare of the individual, from its operation being coin- 

 cident with those of natural instincts. If, as it is said these 

 instincts are still met with among men in a savage state, they 

 are soon weakened or effaced by civilization. 



The tongue, in all the inferior classes of vertebrated ani- 

 mals, namely, Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds, is scarcely ever 

 constructed with a view to the reception of delicate impres- 

 sions of taste; being generally covered with.a thick, and often 

 horny cuticle; and being, besides, scarcely ever employed 

 in mastication. This is the case, also, with a large propor- 

 tion of quadrupeds, which swallow their food entire, and 

 which cannot, therefore, be supposed to have the sense of 

 taste much developed. 



Insects which are provided with a tongue or a proboscis 

 may be conceived to exercise the sense of taste by means of 

 these organs. But many insects possess, besides these, a 

 pair of short feelers, placed behind the true antennae; and it 

 has been observed that, while the insect is taking food, these 

 organs are^in incessant motion, and are continually employed 

 in touching and examining the food, before it is introduced 

 into the mouth: hence, some entomologists have concluded 

 that they are organs of taste. But it must be obvious that 

 in this, as in every other instance in which our researches 

 extend to beings of such minute dimensions, and which oc- 

 cupy a station, in the order of sensitive existence, so remote 

 from ourselves, we are wandering into regions where the 

 only light that is afforded us must be borrowed from vague 

 and fanciful analogies, or created by the force of a vivid and 

 deceptive imagination. 



