200 The Bird 
of a rapacious hawk with the thin-templed head of a 
timid heron and say, “phrenologically,” in the first we 
have the bump of combativeness well developed, analo- 
gous to a prize-fighter; in the second case, timidity is 
prominent! But unfortunately, characteristics such as 
these are compound, and made up of many simple fac- 
tors, the synthesis of which is not confined to any par- 
ticular “bump.” 
At the first sight of the bird’s brain we are struck 
with the very great size of the two larger masses of brain- 
matter—cerebral hemispheres these are called. It is in 
these that the higher faculties reside, and when these are 
destroyed, all knowledge, all power of voluntary move- 
ment passes from the bird. These great brain-halves 
are much larger than in the brain of a reptile, in fact the 
cerebral hemispheres, set deep in the great buttressed 
skull of a full-grown crocodile, are no larger than those 
of the duck which he snaps up. Not only this, but in 
the days of the Archeopteryx (which had a typical bird- 
brain), the monster Dinosaur, Triceratops, 25 feet long, 
had, in its 6 feet of skull, a brain proportionately only 
one tenth as large as that of a modern crocodile! When 
compared with a mammal there is seen to be a conspicu- 
ous difference, since the outer surface is perfectly smooth 
in birds, but is wound about in convolutions in the higher 
four-footed animals. This latter condition is said to indi- 
cate a greater degree of intelligence, but when we look 
at the brain of a young musk-ox or walrus and find convo- 
lutions as deep as those of a five-year-old child, and when 
we compare the wonderfully varied life of birds, and 
