The scale of agreeable sensations on the other hand is very limited, and if there, be a sensible difference between the insipid and that which flatters the taste, the interval is not so great between the good and the excellent.  The following example proves this:—­First term a Bouilli dry and hard.  Second term a piece of veal.  Third term a pheasant done to a turn.

Of all the senses though with which we have been endowed by nature, the taste is the one, which all things considered, procures us the most enjoyments.

1.  Because the pleasure of eating is the only one, when moderately enjoyed, not followed, by fatigue.

2.  It belongs to all aeras, ages and ranks.

3.  Because it necessarily returns once a day, and may without inconvenience be twice or thrice repeated in the same day.

4.  It mingles with all other pleasures, and even consoles us for their absence.

5.  Because the impressions it receives are durable and dependant on, our will.

6.  Because when we eat we receive a certain indefinable and peculiar impression of happiness originating in instinctive conscience.  When we eat too, we repair our losses and prolong our lives.

This will be more carefully explained in the chapter we devote to the pleasures of the table, considered as it has been advanced by civilization.

Supremacy of man.

We were educated in the pleasant faith that of all things that walk, swim, crawl, or fly, man has the most perfect taste.

This faith is liable to be shaken.

Dr. Gall, relying on I know not what examinations, says there are many animals with the gustatory apparatus more developed and extended than man’s.

This does not sound well and looks like heresy.  Man, jure divino, king of all nature, for the benefit of whom the world was peopled, must necessarily be supplied with an organ which places him in relation to all that is sapid in his subjects.

The tongue of animals does not exceed their intelligence; in fishes the tongue is but a movable bone, in birds it is usually a membranous cartilage, and in quadrupeds it is often covered with scales and asperities, and has no circumflex motion.

The tongue of man on the contrary, from the delicacy of its texture and the different membranes by which it is surrounded and which are near to it announces the sublimity of the operations to which it is destined.

I have, at least, discovered three movements unknown to animals, which I call SPICATION, rotation and VERRATION (from the Latin verb verro, I sweep).  The first is when the tongue, like a pike, comes beyond the lips which repress it.  The second is when the tongue rotates around all the space between the interior of the jaws and the palate.  The third is when the tongue moves up and down and gathers the particles which remain in the half circular canal formed by the lips and gums.