110 FACULTIES OP BIRDS. 



CHAPTER V. 



TASTE OF GRANIVOROUS BIRDS. 



WHEN horses or rabbits are fed with oats, though 

 their teeth can readily crush the grain, yet they 

 accidentally swallow many grains uncrushed, which 

 they cannot in consequence digest, their stomachs 

 not being endowed with the power of acting on the 

 solid grain. In order, indeed, as it should seem, to 

 ensure the continuance of species, Providence has 

 furnished the seeds of vegetables with a power of 

 resisting destruction greatly superior to that of the 

 plants produced from them, and hence it is probable 

 the great difficulty of digesting unbroken seeds, as 

 well as of destroying their vegetative life by great 

 degrees of cold or heat*. 



But the circumstance of a horse or a rabbit 

 swallowing imcrushed grain is only accidental, the 

 greater portion of what they swallow being fitted for 

 digestion; whereas in fowls which feed on grain it 

 is all swallowed whole, their bills not being adapted 

 for bruising it. Upon comparing these fowls, there- 

 fore, with the horse and the rabbit, it becomes an 

 obvious inquiry in what manner the unbruised grain 

 is digested, an inquiry which was started in very 

 early times, but not satisfactorily decided till Spal- 

 lanzani and other modern physiologists instituted a 

 series of experiments upon the subject. 



The most absurd fables indeed were current res- 

 pecting the stones found in the stomachs of fowls, 

 and the illustrious Redi was persuaded by his friend 

 Morera to apply one of them he had brought from 

 India to his forehead as a certain cure for a violent 

 megrim (hemicrania) to which he was subject. 

 The experiment, as might have been anticipated, 

 * See Insect Transformations, p, 95-9. 



