the act or faculty of perceiving sounds. Hearing is reckoned among our external senses. Its organ is the ear, and particularly the auditory nerve diffused through the same; and its object, certain motions or vibrations of the air. Hence hearing may be more scientifically defined, a sensation, whereby, from a due motion impressed on the fibrilla of the auditory nerve, and communicated thence to the sensory, the mind perceives and gets the idea of sounds. See Anatomy, no 141.

Hearing in different animals. See Comparative Anatomy, Entomology, and Ichthyology.