CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF BIRDS. 83 



T)rain lying above the meatus in animals of different species, 

 which are not carnivorous, must have the same function."* 

 What I would maintain is simply this ; that when the 

 seats of the individual faculties have been determined in 

 one species of bird, there ought to be no difficulty in de- 

 termining them in all other birds which have the same 

 number of cerebral parts. But this, the only rational mode 

 of examination, it is evident, would not suit the advocates 

 of phrenology ; for by elucidating the truth, and that alone, 

 a theory, which, like theirs, is founded upon particular, 

 and not upon universal facts, falls at once to the ground. It 

 would appear, that, in order to determine the seats of the 

 different faculties, a series of observations must be made 

 on each species, or even upon different individuals of that 

 species. How is it, may I ask, that while the situation of 

 Destructiveness is admitted to be exactly the same in all 

 birds without exception,t that of its neighbour, Combative- 

 ness, should be differently situated in the hen from what it 

 is in rapacious and other birds ? It requires no great pene- 

 tration to assign the cause of all this. Combativeness being 

 a prominent propensity in rapacious birds, it is very easy 

 to fix upon some protuberance on their cranium under 

 which to localise it ; and if, on comparing the skull of a 

 non-combatant in the same situation, the phrenologist 

 should find, instead of a depression, a bump there also, a 

 very little stretch of the imagination is all that is required 

 to transfer the faculty in question to the first remarkable 

 depression in the immediate neighbourhood, and then con- 

 sider this marvellous induction as complete. 



* Phrenological Journal, vol. i. p. 222. 

 "|- Vimont's Traite de Phrenologie, p. 290* 



