VI FORM AND FUNCTION 117 
of the muscles of wings, tail, neck, and beak—for an 
unerring dart and snap at the victim, he has proved 
that he possesses nerves of the first order. 
The Brain. 
The subject is a very difficult one. It is impossible 
as yet to impart interest to it by allotting to cach part 
of the brain its special function. Some progress is 
being made in this by methods of study that are 
scientific and dependable, but, at the same time, slow 
and laborious. It is hardly necessary to say that 
phrenology which mapped out the skull into pro- 
vinces, like an old and well-known country, not like 
a half-explored continent, has gone to the limbo whcre 
all systems founded on mere guesswork must go. 
If a bird’s fragile skull be removed carefully, so 
as to leave the brain uninjured, the posterior part, 
the cerebellum (cd, Fig. 30), will be easily dis- 
tinguished ; in contact with it at their hinder ends are 
two large bodies that make up nearly the whole of the 
top of the brain. These are the cerebral hemispheres, 
the larger development of which makes a bird’s brain so 
different from a reptile’s (c%). In them all the higher 
faculties reside. If they are severely injured or re- 
moved, there is no more intelligence, memory, or 
voluntary movement. There is only what is called 
reflex action such as is called forth in a hydra or a 
coral animal when food touches its tentacles ; they close 
upon it without consciousness or intention on the 
1 See Coues’ Field and General Ornithology, p. 257 and 
onward. 
