CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF BIRDS. 77 



impracticable, or at least very difficult to fulfil, unless each 

 individual animal to be examined had been brought up in 

 captivity, and thus, being constantly open to observation, 

 its mental qualities had become accurately known. But 

 phrenologists themselves admit, that f it must have struck 

 every observer, that the differences of mental character are 

 met with to a much greater extent, and with much greater 

 frequency, among man, than among the individuals of any 

 species of the lower animals."* The natural dispositions 

 of all birds, in the state of nature at least, are as nearly as 

 possible similar among all the individuals of each species ; 

 and even phrenologists themselves tacitly admit the fact 

 when they say, for example, that such and such an organ 

 will be found largely developed in the sparrow or the crow, 

 thereby esteeming all sparrows and all crows as of a simi- 

 lar nature. The difference in this respect becomes still 

 more apparent, when we think how ludicrous it would be 

 to talk of wit, philoprogenitiveness, or any other organ, 

 being largely developed in man, that is, in the whole genus 

 Homo. 



Having thus got over the first condition, we are now 

 prepared to consider the second, or whether the size of the 

 brain can be discovered during life, or rather, as applied to 

 the lower animals, after death ; for, while with birds it is 

 wdthin the reach of every one to observe their habits, and 

 after so doing, to kill the animal and examine its brain, a 

 similar proceeding with regard to our own species could be 

 practised only by a few men of science, as the czar of Rus- 

 sia, and the Turkish sultan. As it is inconvenient in all 



* Combe's System of Phrenology, vol. i, p. 85, 



