623 
ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 
circumscribed within the perceptions of the moment, and their 
voluntary actions have reference chiefly to objects which are 
present to the sense. In proportion as the intellectual faculties 
of animals are multiplied, and embrace a wider sphere, adai- 
tional magnitude and complication of structure are given to the 
nervous substance which is the organ of those faculties. The 
greater the power of combining ideas, and of retaining them in 
the memory, the greater do we find the development or the 
cerebral hemispheres. These parts of the brain are comparatively 
small in fishes, reptiles, 8cc., and the greater number of buds; 
but in the mammalia they are expanded in a degiee nearly pio- 
portional to the extent of memory, sagacity, and docility. In 
man, for instance, in whom all the faculties of sense and intel¬ 
lect are so harmoniously combined, the brain is not only the 
largest in its size, but, beyond all comparison, tne most compli¬ 
cated in its structure. A large brain was bestowed on man 
evidently with the design that he should exercise superior powers 
of intellect; the great distinguishing features of which are,^ the 
capacity for retaining an immense variety of impressions, ana the 
strength, the extent, and vast range of the associating principle 
which combines them. Yet the lower animals also possess their 
share of memory and of reason. 
This, we confess, is a favourite study of ours we have more 
than once written on the subject in The Veterinarian; 
and it is with pleasure that we discover that the author s ideas 
coincide with our own. r 
“ The lower animals,” he says, ie possess their share of me** 
mory and of reason; they are capable of acquiring knowledge 
from experience; and, on some rare occasions, of devising expe¬ 
dients for accomplishing particular ends. But still this know¬ 
ledge, and their efforts of intellect, are confined withm very 
naiTOW limits ; for nature has assigned boundaries to the aavance- 
ment of the lower animals, which they can never pass. If one 
favoured individual be selected for a special education, some 
additional share of intelligence may, perhaps, with infinite pains, 
be infused; but the improvement perishes with that individual, 
and is wholly lost to the race. By far the greater portion of that 
knowledge which it imports them to possess is the gift of nature, 
who has wisely implanted such instinctive impulses as are neces¬ 
sary for their preservation. Man also is born with instincts ; 
but they are few in number compared with those of the lowei 
animals; and, unless cultivated and improved by reason and 
education, would, of themselves, produce but inconsiderable re¬ 
sults. That of which the effects are most conspicuous, and 
which is the foundation of all that is noble and exalted in oui 
