INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS. 113 
delectable, and that it will also attract insects. The 
farmer has found by experience that it will make sugar. 
The bird knows as well as the man from what trees and 
at what seasons it will run, and he generally bores the 
evergreen in winter, the maple and silver birch in March 
and April, and the yellow birch a month later, just when 
the fluids of these trees flow most freely. 
Although appearing on the earth in some of their 
primitive forms and conditions, at an earlier period than 
some of the quadrupeds, yet the birds undoubtedly in 
many respects rank first among the lower animals in 
organization and intelligence. They have the largest 
brain in comparison with the other parts of the body, it 
being in some species one-sixteenth part of the entire 
weight. Their powers of locomotion are superior to any 
other class of vertebrates. They have the largest 
breathing capacity and the most rapid respiration. An 
English scientist says: “This rapid movement of the 
heart necessitates a rapid circulation of blood through 
the brain: and this means a more hurried flow of con- 
sciousness, a more rapid succession of ideas. Ina given 
time the swallow moves more, breathes more, and there- 
fore probably feels and lives more than any other living 
animal.” Certainly no other beings manifest such acute 
suffering at the destruction of their mate or young, or 
show such a whirlwind of ecstasy as many of the little 
fluttering warblers do in some of their wild bursts of 
song. 
Birds alone of all the lower animals use, like man, 
the tongue as the principal organ of sound or speech : 
