ORGANS OF THE SENSES. 295 



shaped cavity in the cystophora, and most extended in the 

 elephant where they serve as organs of prehension both for 

 fluid and solid food. Where the cerebral hemispheres in 

 this class are largest, the olfactory, like most of the other 

 sensorial organs, are comparatively small, as in the quadru- 

 mana and man, and they are proportionally large in the 

 human foetus and in the negro, as in the inferior orders of 

 mammalia. 



FIFTH SECTION. 



Organs of Taste. 



The organs of taste are situate in the mucous membrane 

 of the mouth, especially in the papillae and calyces of the 

 tongue, and are adapted to convey a knowledge of many 

 properties of sapid bodies applied to these parts ; so that, 

 as the organs of smell watch over the respiratory organs 

 and the properties of the surrounding element, those of taste 

 are situate at the entrance of the digestive apparatus where 

 they can best examine the materials to be conveyed into 

 the alimentary canal. According to the extent and delicacy 

 of these parts of the mouth, and their supply of blood 

 vessels and nerves, the sense of taste appears to be de- 

 veloped in animals, and the gratification of this sense forms 

 an incentive towards supplying the necessary wants of the 

 body. Although these organs appropriated to our sense of 

 taste are more rarely met with in the inferior animals than the 

 organs of the former senses, it is difficult to conceive animals 

 with a mouth and stomach without supposing that they derive 

 some sensations of taste from the substances they introduce 

 as food into these cavities, and such sensations have been 

 ascribed even to the polygastric animalcules, from their 

 apparent selection of proper food, and their rejecting hurtful 

 substances. Where delicate buccal organs, of doubtful 

 function, are directly applied to the food in the lowest tribes 

 of animals, it may be inferred that they communicate some 

 impressions of this kind, as the prominent lips of many 

 polypi and acalepha, the minute tubular organs around the 

 mouth of ophiurae, asteriae, spatangi, arid most other echino- 

 derma, and the tongue and lips of most articulated and 

 molluscous animals. Notwithstanding the shortness and 



