OEEEBUAL DEVELOPMENT OF BIRDS. 81 



of birds, because they manifest at least as much intelligence 

 as quadrupeds, the structure of whose brain is nearly simi- 

 lar to that of man himself, and consequently its functions, 

 if not identical, at least analogous. Gall and Spurzheim, 

 accordingly, endeavoured to do so, but with what success 

 I have already shewn ; and the investigations of Yimont 

 alone are to be held as orthodox, and alone are worthy of 

 serious consideration. 



Yimont has assigned seats upon the brain of birds to 

 many of the mental faculties formerly considered as proper 

 to man, and in his atlas figures the skull of a crow, upon 

 which are indicated no less than twenty- eight different or- 

 gans, analogues of the forty-two into which he has parcel- 

 led the human mind. These, he states, have all been de- 

 termined by his own observation to be the seats of as many 

 different faculties ; for we are told, that " phrenologists ad- 

 mit neither fewer, nor a greater number of faculties than 

 they find in nature."* 



Let us see how the seats of the faculties are determined 

 by phrenologists. This appears at first sight an easy task. 

 All that seems necessary, is to ascertain the parts of the 

 brain of birds which are analogous to those of the human 

 cerebrum, on which latter the organs have been already 

 determined. But many difficulties lie in our way ; the 

 absence of convolutions is one, and the principal one. The 

 brain of a bird, as already noticed, appears smooth and 

 uniform in its surface, and no marks are visible by which 

 to divide it into lobes, or even point out any individual 

 part which corresponds to a given point on the brain of the 



* Combe's System of Phrenology, p. 779. 



