Among the apes
it has greatly lost importance and in man it has become almost
rudimentary, giving place to the supremacy of vision.
Prof. G. Elliot Smith, a leading authority on the brain, has well
summarized the facts concerning the predominance of the olfactory
region in the mammal brain, and his conclusions may be quoted. It
should be premised that Elliot Smith divides the brain into
rhinencephalon and neopallium. Rhinencephalon designates the
regions which are pre-eminently olfactory in function: the
olfactory bulb, its peduncle, the tuberculum olfactorium and
locus perforatus, the pyriform lobe, the paraterminal body, and
the whole hippocampal formation. The neopallium is the dorsal cap
of the brain, with frontal, parietal, and occipital areas,
comprehending all that part of the brain which is the seat of the
higher associative activities, reaching its fullest development
in man.
"In the early mammals the olfactory areas form by far the greater
part of the cerebral hemisphere, which is not surprising when it
is recalled that the forebrain is, in the primitive brain,
essentially an appendage, so to speak, of the smell apparatus.
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