ORDER ACCIPITRES. 117 



most distinguishing character of the brain of birds is, that 

 each of the anterior ventricles is inclosed in a thin partition, 

 which is not found in any other vertebrated animals. 



Though the brain of birds is without the corpus callosum, 

 the septum lucidum, pons Varolii, and some other less im- 

 portant parts, still the tubercles called nates, acquire a 

 considerable development, and especially those eminences, 

 which are analogous to the corpora striata, become very con- 

 siderable. These animals possess, upon the whole, a volu- 

 minous brain, even more so than many of the mammifera. 

 This is peculiarly the case with the smaller species, for large 

 birds, as the ostrich, goose, &c., have small heads; but the 

 sparrow, canary, and other small birds, have a cerebellum pro- 

 portionally larger than that of man himself, sometimes com- 

 posing even a twenty-second part of their whole body ; and ac- 

 cordingly we find such birds, like the pan'ot, possessing a veiy 

 considerable portion of intelligence *. 



* Our readers will, perhaps, furgfive us for once more adverting-, in this 

 place, to a subject frequently touched on before in the course of these 

 volumes — we mean the proximate causes of intellectual superiority in 

 man and other animals. We shall not, we trust, be readily suspected of 

 any leaning- to the doctrines of materialism ; but, setting his spiritual 

 part totally out of the question, we must, in explaining his mental endow- 

 ments, avoid taking a partial view of the complicated machinery of man. 

 Man's superiority over other animals does not consist, even materially, 

 in the superior development of the brain ; — were this the case, the birds 

 above mentioned would be at least his equals. It consists in the admi- 

 rable harmony and connexion that subsist between all the parts of his 

 entire organization. His hand, as Helvetius has remarked, gives him 

 infinite advantages ; but that hand was formed for that head. The hoof 

 of a horse would have been a very inadequate instruuient for performing 

 the actions suggested by the intelligence of a man. In every animal 

 S3'stem, the peculiar conformation of one part necessitates the peculiar con- 

 formation of every other. There must be a correspondence, a harmony, 

 an unity in the whole system, for the production of a given end. Man is 

 eminently an intelligetit animal, and accordingly we find that his entire 

 organisation tends to the production of this point. Certain declaimers 



