124 Animal Morphology. 



species of interdependent necessary reflex actions, whereby it 

 regulates and guides the actions of the several limbs into 

 one harmonious whole of mutually subservient agents one 

 to the other. The senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste 

 are merely a succession of suppressed limbs or extremities, 

 whose object is better gained by saving material, and 

 altering the mechanical contrivances, as so many in- 

 stances of special morphology, so as to secure greater 

 extension of limbs by superior and more refined forms 

 of mechanical and, in taste and smell, chemical con- 

 trivances. 



There is, perhaps, no part to which greater importance 

 ought to be attached than to the four senses smell, taste, 

 hearing, and sight ; they are truly the interpreters to the 

 remaining three, which have already been given. They are, 

 as it were, complementary senses, neither of which performs 

 its functions well without the education of the other. Sight 

 aids hearing, because sound is so much better appreciated 

 when the head is turned conveniently for its reception ; and 

 sounds in their kind are so distinctive that, from experience, 

 we know for a given sound we have a given object in form 

 and size to look at, as a fiddle, a bassoon, a cock, or a crow 

 to turn towards, before we direct our best attention to the 

 point from whence it proceeds ; but, after seen and followed 

 by the eye, the sounds are more clearly defined and the 

 intensity more accurately measured. 



If so much can be said of sight directing and educating 

 the ear, much more may be said of sound indicating the 

 point towards which sight ought to be directed. 



The ear is more universal in its appreciation of its own 

 natural stimulus than the eye ; hence sounds from behind, 

 the sides, or in front are nearly equally appreciated, and in 

 such manner sight is directed to the object from whence 

 sound comes almost instanter. A horse trotting on a 



