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diff --git a/old/60584-0.txt b/old/60584-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1cba0ac..0000000 --- a/old/60584-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5134 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aromatics and the Soul, by Dan McKenzie - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Aromatics and the Soul - A Study of Smells - -Author: Dan McKenzie - -Release Date: October 28, 2019 [EBook #60584] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROMATICS AND THE SOUL *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing, ellinora, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - AROMATICS AND THE SOUL - - - - - DISEASES OF - THE THROAT, NOSE, - AND EAR - - - By DAN MCKENZIE, M.D., F.R.C.S.E. - Royal 8vo. 650 pages. 2 Coloured - Plates and 198 Illustrations. - =42s.= net. - - _Times Literary - Supplement._—“There is probably - no better book on this branch of - medicine and surgery in - existence.” - - - LONDON - WILLIAM HEINEMANN - (MEDICAL BOOKS) LTD. - - - - - AROMATICS AND THE SOUL - A STUDY OF SMELLS - - - BY - DAN McKENZIE, M.D. (GLASG.) - FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, EDINBURGH - - “Natura rerum quae sit odoribus intenta sunt....” - _Q. Horatii Flacci Carminum_, Lib. V. - - “There are whose study is of smells” - _R. Kipling’s version of the same_ - -[Illustration] - - LONDON - WILLIAM HEINEMANN - (MEDICAL BOOKS) LTD. - 1923 - - - - - INSCRIBED TO - - DR. V. H. WYATT WINGRAVE - - IN ADMIRATION - - OF - - AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT - - - _Printed in Great Britain._ - - - - - PREFACE - - -Having, as I thought, completed this book—bar the Preface, which is, of -course, always the last chapter—I sent it in manuscript to an old friend -of mine for his opinion. - -He let me have it. - -“Your brochure,” he wrote, “is remarkable more perhaps for what it omits -than for what it contains. For example, there is no mention whatever -made of the _vomero-nasal organ, or organ of Jacobson_.” - -Then, after drastically sweeping away the much that seems to him -redundant in the body of the work, he closes his general criticism -(which I omit) with “I should like to have heard your views on the -vomero-nasal organ. Parker devotes a whole chapter to it.” - -A carpenter, according to the adage, is known by his chips. And it was -by the simple removal of some superfluous marble, as everyone knows, -that the Venus of Milo was revealed to the world—which is only another -way of saying the same thing. - -But what sort of a carpenter is he who leaves among his chips the -mouldings of his door? And what should we say of the sculptor, even in -these days, who would treat as a superfluity his lady’s chin? - -No mention of the vomero-nasal or Jacobson’s organ! A serious, nay! a -damning, defect. - -So here am I trying to atone for the sin of omission by giving the -neglected item place of honour in my Preface. “The stone which the -builders rejected....” - -But my motive for erecting it here, in the gateway to my little pagoda -of the perfumes, is not quite so simple as I am pretending. The fact is -that in my capacity as creator I predetermined, I actually foredained, -the omission from my text of the structure to which “Parker devotes a -whole chapter.” - -I am sorry in some ways. But as the Aberdeen minister so consolingly -said: “There are many things the Creator does in His offeecial capacity -that He would scorn to do as a private indiveedual.” - -You see, I had a feeling about it. One of those feelings artists are -subject to. (But a scientific writer an artist?—Certainly! Why not?) - -I felt, to be quite frank, that if I were to interpolate a description -and a discussion of this _minutia_ my book would ... would.... Quite so. -The artist will understand. - -I came, in short, to look upon this “organ,” this nose within a nose, as -a touchstone, so to speak. The thing became a Symbol. - -But here we plunge head over heels into the Subjective, on the other -side of which stream lie the misty shades of the Occult. For that is -what happens to you when you begin talking about Symbols. - -However, we shall not be crossing to the other side on this occasion, my -symbolism being after all but a humdrum affair.—Merely this, that to me -this organ of Jacobson is the symbol of the Exhaustive—of the minute, -punctilious, unwearying, laboured comprehensiveness, Teutonic in its -over and under and through, that characterises the genuine, the -reliable, scientific treatise and renders it so desperately full of -interest—to examinees. - -Imagine, if you can, the indignation of kindly Sir Walter were the news -ever to reach him in Valhalla that urchins now at school are not only -forced to study his light-hearted romances as holiday tasks, but are -actually examined upon them! - -So, comparing small things with great, let me say: “_Absit omen_.” - - -My faith in the spoken charm of that phrase is, however, none too -robust. Heaven helps the man who helps himself. And so, by way of -reinforcing the Powers in their efforts to divert professorial attention -from this essay of mine, I am leaving it, by a careful act of -carelessness, incomplete. - -Here, then, you have the real reason for my exclusion of the organ of -Jacobson (and the like). It is merely a dodge to prevent the book ever -becoming a task in any way, for any one, at any time. - -He who runs may read herein, then, without slackening pace—or he may -refrain from reading, just as he pleases, seeing that he can never be -under the compulsion of remembering a single word I have written. - -This, if I may say so, is, in my opinion, the only kind of book worth -reading. At all events, it is the only kind I ever enjoy reading, and I -say if a book is not enjoyable it is already placed upon the only Index -Expurgatorius that is worth a ... an anathema. - - D. M. - - - - - TABLE OF CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - - PREFACE v - - I. OLFACTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH 1 - - II. THE SENSE OF OLFACTION IN LOWER ANIMALS 21 - - III. OLFACTORY MEMORY 43 - - IV. SMELL AND SPEECH 59 - - V. SMELL IN FOLK-LORE, RELIGION, AND HISTORY 66 - - VI. THE ULTIMATE 79 - - VII. SMELL AND THE PERSONALITY 87 - - VIII. THEORIES OF OLFACTION 98 - - IX. DUST OF THE ROSE PETAL 140 - - - - - AROMATICS AND THE SOUL - - - - - CHAPTER 1 - OLFACTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH - - -I sing of smells, of scents, perfumes, odours, whiffs and niffs; of -aromas, bouquets and fragrances; and also, though temperately and -restrainedly I promise you, of effluvia, reeks, fœtors, stenches, and -stinks. - - -A few years ago I stood before the public singing another song. By no -means a service of praise it was, but something of the order of a -denunciatory psalm, wherein I invoked the wrath of the high gods upon -such miscreants as make life hideous with din. - -You must not think that imprecations cannot be sung. All emotional -utterance is song, said Carlyle; only he said it not quite so briefly. -And, leaving on one side the vituperations of his enemies by King David -(if he it was who wrote the Psalms) which we still chant upon certain -days of the Christian year, it may be remembered that in bygone times -when the medical practitioner was a wizard (or a witch) and uttered his -(or her) spell to stay the arrows of Apollo, it not infrequently -contained a denunciation of some brother (or sister) practitioner of the -art (how times are changed!), and it was known, in Rome at all events, -as a _carmen_, a song. Hence, say the etymologists, the English word -“charm,” which still, of course, characterises the modern witch, if not -the modern wizard—neither of whom, we may add, is nowadays a medical -practitioner. - -Besides, denunciations are, of course, grunted and growled with more or -less of a semblance of singing in modern opera. To substantiate my words -I need only mention that interminable scene—or is it an act?—of gloom -and evil plottings by Telramund and Ortrud in _Lohengrin_. - -But if I am again singing, this time, I trust, my voice will sound in -the ears of my hearers less shrill, less strident, less of a shriek. -For, in sooth, the present theme is one upon which we are justly -entitled, in so far as England and Scotland at all events are concerned, -to raise what would be a _Nunc Dimittis_ of praise and thanksgiving, -were it not that the price of cleanly air like that of liberty is -eternal vigilance, seeing that our nostrils are no longer offended by -the stenches our forefathers had to put up with. That they endured such -offences philosophically, cheerfully even, laughing at the -unpleasantness as men do at a bad smell, is true. Nevertheless most -people in those days probably felt as much objection to a vile odour as -Queen Elizabeth, for example, did, the sharpness of whose nose, her -biographers tell us, was only equalled by the sharpness of her tongue. - - -Irishmen who do me the honour of tasting this light omelette of -scientific literature will have noticed, I am sure, that I have not -included the sister isle in my olfactory paradise. And indeed, I -hesitated long before passing it over, because I am a man of peace—at -any price where the Land of Ire is concerned. But alas! I am by nature -truthful and only by art mendacious. And there sticks horrible to my -memory the fumous and steamy stench of parboiled cabbage that filled the -restaurant-car of the train for Belfast—yes! Belfast, not Dublin—one -evening as I landed at Kingstown. The sea had been—well! it was the -Irish Sea, and I stepped on to the train straight from the mail-boat, so -that ... in a word, I remember that luscious but washy odour too vividly -to bestow upon Ireland the white flower of a stenchless life. - -In these remarks I have been careful to observe that the train was not -the Dublin train, but if any one feels moved to defend the capital city, -let him first of all take a stroll down by the Liffey as it flows -fermenting and bubbling under its bridges, and then ... if he can.... - -Let me, however, in justice to that grief-stricken country, spray a -little perfume over my too pungent observations. I can also recall after -many years a warm and balmy evening in the town of Killarney, the -peaceful close to a day of torrential rain. The setting sun, glowing -love through its tears, was reddening the sky and the dark green hills -around, those hills of Ireland where surely, if anywhere on this earth, -heaven is foreshadowed. And linked in memory with that evening’s glory -there comes, like the gentle strain of a long-forgotten song, the rich, -pungent smell of turf-smoke eddying blue from low chimneys into the soft -air of the twilight. Ireland! Ireland! What an atmosphere of love and -grief that name calls up! Surely the surf that beats upon the strands of -Innisfail far away is more salt, more bitter, and perhaps for that very -reason more sweet, than the waters of any of the other beaches that -ocean bathes! - -Thence also comes a memory of heliotrope. It grew by a cottage just -beyond a grey granite fishing-harbour in Dublin Bay, and brings also, -with its faint, ineffable fragrance, the same inseparable blending of -emotions that clings, itself a never-dying odour, to the memory of -holidays in Ireland. There is a phrase in a song, simple, sentimental, -even silly if you like, that prays for “the peace of mind dearer than -all.” - -“But what,” I remember asking the mother of our party—“what is meant by -‘peace of mind’?” Her wistful smile seemed to me to be a very inadequate -reply to my question—which, by the way, I am still asking. - - -It is an historical fact that the movement which rendered England the -pioneer country in the matter of Public Health received its first -impulse from, and even now owes its continued existence to, the simple -accident that the English public has grown intolerant of over-obtrusive -odours. Stenches have attained to the dignity of a legal topic of -interest, and are now by Act of Parliament become “nuisances” in law as -well as in nature, with the result that they have been, for the most -part, banished from the face of the land and the noses of its -inhabitants. - -The reason assigned by the man in the street for this reform was, and -indeed still is, that stenches breed epidemic diseases. In a noisome -smell people imagine a deadly pestilence, probably because patients -affected with such epidemic diseases as smallpox, typhus, and -diphtheria, give off nauseating odours. Now, bad smells from drains and -cesspools do not of themselves induce epidemic disease. Nevertheless, -there is this much of truth in the superstition, that where you have bad -smells you have also surface accumulations of filth, and these, soaking -through soil and subsoil, contaminate surface wells, until it only -requires the advent of a typhoid or other “carrier” to set a widespread -epidemic a-going. Further, as recent investigators have shown us, the -loathsome and deadly typhus fever, known for years to be a -“filth-disease,” is carried by lice, which pests breed and flourish -where bodily cleanliness is neglected and personal odours are strong. - -So that in this, as in most superstitions, there is a substratum of -truth. - -But the point is, that the objection to bad smells preceded all those -scientific discoveries and had, in the beginning, but a slender support -from rationalism. Our forebears builded better than they knew. Their -objection was in reality intuitive. It may be true that all nations -occupying a corresponding level of civilisation will manifest the same -instinctive abhorrences, but it has been left to the practical genius of -the English race to give effect to the natural repugnance and to -translate its urgings into practice. - -The interesting question now arises: How and when did this intuition or -instinct, this blind feeling, arise, and what transformed it from a mere -individual objection, voiced here and there, to a mass-movement leading -to a general popular reformation? - -The first explanation that is likely to occur to us is, that it was due -to the refinement of feeling that accompanies high civilisation -operating in a community quick to respond and to react when a public -benefit is anticipated. One of the results of culture is an increase in -the delicacy of the senses. When men and women strive after refinement, -they achieve it, becoming refined, in spite of what pessimists and -so-called realists preach, not only in their outward behaviour, but also -in their innermost thoughts and feelings, and this internal refinement -implies among other things a quickening of the sense of disgust. There -is naturally a close and intimate connection between the sense of smell -and the nerve-centres which, when stimulated, evoke the feeling of -nausea in the mind—and the bodily acts that follow it. We are here -dealing, in fact, with a primitive protective impulse to ensure that -evil-smelling things shall not be swallowed, and the means adopted by -Nature to prevent that ingestion, or, if it has accidentally occurred, -to reverse it, are prompt. And successful. There is no compromise with -the evil thing. - -Like all other nerve-reactions, this particular reflex can be educated: -either up or down. It can be blunted and degraded, or it can be rendered -more acute, more prompt to react. Now, one of the effects of civilised -life, of town life, is to abbreviate the period of all reflex action. -And if this applies to knee-jerks and to seeing jokes, it is even more -noticeable in the particular reflex we are here considering. - -A citizen of Cologne in Coleridge’s days, for example, must have been -anosmic to most of the seven-and-twenty stenches that offended the -Englishman, and in my own time I have counted as many as ten -objectionable public perfumes, yea! even in Lucerne, the “Lovely -Lucerne” of the railway posters. Several of these, perhaps, did not -amount to more than a mere whiff, just the suspicion of a something -unpleasant, no more (but no less) disturbing than, say, one note a -semitone flat in a major chord; two or three of them, however, to the -sensitive, thin-winged organ of an English school-ma’am, would have -attained to the rank of a “smell,” a word on her lips as emphatic as an -oath on yours or mine; four of them, at the least, were plain stenches, -and so beyond _her_ vocabulary altogether; and one was—well! beyond even -mine, but only too eloquent itself of something ugly and bloated, some -mess becoming aerial just round the corner. I did not turn that corner. - -Now, the people of Lucerne could never have smelled them, or at all -events they could never have appreciated those perfumes as I did, or the -town would have been evacuated. Their olfactory sense compared with mine -must have been a stupid thing, dense to begin with, and cudgelled by use -and wont into blank insensibility. Because, it is obvious, delicacy in -this, as in all the senses, can only be acquired by avoiding habitual -overstimulation. And that avoidance is only possible in a country where -odours are fine, etherealised, rare. - - -Even in France, France the enlightened, the sensitive, the refined, -primitive odours pervade the country, as our Army knows very well. Not -only is the farm dunghill given place of honour in the farm courtyard, -close to doors and windows, but even in the mansions of the wealthy the -cesspool still remains—not outside, but inside, the house, the -water-carriage system, even the pail-system (if that can be called a -system), being unknown. So that our Army authorities had to send round a -peculiar petrol-engine, known to the Tommies as “Stinking Willie,” to -empty those pools of corruption. Some of the monasteries used by us as -hospitals were, at the beginning of the war, even worse. - -From this we may surmise that the olfactory sense of our neighbours is -not yet so sensitive as is ours. - -But in this matter Western Europe, at its worst—say, in one of the -corridor-trains to Marseilles—is a mountain-top to a pigstye compared -with the old and gorgeous East. “The East,” ejaculated an old Scotsman -once—“the East is just a smell! It begins at Port Said and disna stop -till ye come to San Francisco, ... if there!” he added after a pause. -From his sweeping condemnation we must, however, exempt Japan. - -Who can ever forget the bazaar smells of India, the mingled must and -fust with its background of garlic and strange vices, or the still more -mysterious atmospheres of China with their deep suggestion of musk? - -Naturally the air of a cold country is clearer of obnoxious vapours than -that of tropical and subtropical climes, but in spite of that, the first -whiff of a Tibetan monastery, like that of an Eskimo hut, grips the -throat, they say, like the air over a brewing vat. - -So that, after making every allowance for the favour of Nature, we are -still entitled to claim that the relative purity of England, and of -English cities, towns and even villages, is an artificial achievement. - -I may therefore, with justice, raise a song of praise to our fathers who -have had our country thus swept and garnished, swept of noxious vapours -and emanations, and garnished with the perfume of pure and fresh air, to -the delight and invigoration of our souls. - -And yet the change has only recently been brought about. Up to the -beginning of the nineteenth century the city of London - - “was certainly as foul as could be. The streets were unpaved or - paved only with rough cobble stones. There were no side walks. The - houses projected over the roadway, and were unprovided with - rain-water gutters, and during a shower rain fell from the roofs - into the middle of the street. These streets were filthy from - constant contributions of slops and ordure from animals and human - beings. There were no underground drains, and the soil of the town - was soaked with the filth of centuries. This sodden condition of the - soil must have affected the wells to a greater or less extent.” - (“London, Sanitary and Medical,” by G. V. Poore. 1889.) - -Moreover, the nineteenth century was well on its way before the last of -the private cesspools disappeared from the dwelling-houses of London. - -Edinburgh during the Middle Ages was, we are told, fresher and cleaner -upon its wind-swept ridge than London, but with the erection of lofty -houses in the High Street and Haymarket of the northern capital its -atmosphere became much worse than that of London. The reason for this -was that while the London houses remained low, and the population -therefore, for a city, widely distributed, in those of Edinburgh, on the -other hand, a large community of all classes of society was -concentrated, from the noble lord and lady to the beggarly caddie and -quean. And the whole stew was quite innocent of what we call drainage. -Quite. Yet the waste-products of life, the lees and offscourings of -humanity, all that housemaids call “slops,” had to be got rid of. Very -simple problem this to our worthy Edinburgh forefathers. After dark the -windows up in these “lands” were thrust open, and with a shrill cry of -“Gardy-loo” (_Gardez l’eau_) the cascade of swipes and worse fell into -the street below with a splash and an od—. “Ha! ha!” laughed Dr. Johnson -to little Boswell; “I can smell you there in the dark!” - -The hygienic reformation of Britain, although adumbrated by sundry laws -made at intervals from the fifteenth century onwards, was not seriously -taken in hand until as late as the sixties of last century, and -Disraeli’s famous Act defining a bad smell as a “nuisance” became law in -1875. - - -But although we may justly congratulate ourselves upon the hygienic -achievements of England, one result of which has been the minimising of -unpleasant odours, nevertheless, as a wider consideration of the facts -will show us, the task of cleansing the air of England is not yet -entirely completed. It is doubtless true that what we may term domestic -stenches have for the most part been dispelled, but as regards public -fœtors there are still, I regret to say, a few that abide with us, -seemingly as nasty as ever they were. - -One deplorable instance you will encounter at the Paddington terminus of -the Great Western Railway no less, at a certain platform of which -station, lying in wait for our fresh country cousins on their arrival in -London, there lurks a livid concoction of ancient milk, horse-manure, -live stock, dead stock, and, in the month of July, fermenting -strawberries, as aggressive and unashamed as the worst Lucerne has to -offer. I commend it to the attention of the Medical Officer of Health -for Paddington. - -Nay more! This West London efflorescence does not lie blooming alone. It -is by no means the last rose of summer. On the east side of the great -city, another, a rival upas-tree, spreads its nauseating blight. This is -a mess that, oozing from a soap factory near Stratford-atte-Bow, -envelops in its oleaginous cloud several hundred yards of the main line -of the Great Eastern Railway. And the world we live in is so arranged -that the trains, particularly in summer, are held up by signal for -several minutes in this neighbourhood, so that, as the greasy slabs of -decomposing fats slump in at the open carriage windows, an early -opportunity is afforded to our Continental visitors of becoming -acquainted with the purifying properties of English soap. - -I am blushing now for what I have been saying about Ireland, Cologne, -Lucerne, France, and even the East. - -This last instance, however, opens up a large subject, that, namely, of -malodorous industries. Of these there is a great number, too great -indeed for me to do more than make a passing allusion to them. The -proximity of evil-smelling works and factories to human habitations is, -as a matter of fact, prohibited by the Public Health Acts, but it is -naturally impossible to remove them entirely from the knowledge of -mankind inasmuch as the workers frequently carry the atmosphere about -with them. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for us, by reason of -the rapid exhaustion of the olfactory sense (which we are about to deal -with in the following section), they are, for the most part, not -incommoded by the objectionable airs they work in. - -Perhaps the worst of all are the bone-manure factories, malodorous mills -which are almost invariably situated at a distance of several miles from -any dwelling-house, as it would be impossible for any one but the -workers themselves to live in their neighbourhood. These unfortunate -people, many of whom are women, carry, as I have already remarked, the -stench about with them on their clothing and persons, and I have -observed that, being themselves insensitive to the odour, they cannot -rid themselves of it even on Sundays and holidays. - -In this class also we must place tanneries, glueworks, and size -factories, a visit to which is a severe trial for any one unaccustomed -to them. Dyeworks, likewise, by reason of the organic sulphur compounds -they disseminate through the spongy air, are unpleasant neighbours. In -cotton mills, also, the sizing-rooms are objectionable, and here, -curiously enough, the operatives do not seem to become accustomed to the -smell, as it is insinuatingly rather than bluntly offensive, and grows -worse with use. So much so, indeed, that but few of the girls, I am -told, are able to remain in that particular occupation for more than a -few weeks at a time. - - -At this stage, albeit early in our disquisition, we may appropriately -turn to consider the curious fact that of all our senses that of smell -is perhaps the most easily exhausted. The olfactory organ, under the -continued stimulation of one particular odour, quite quickly becomes -insensitive to it. Perhaps this is the reason, or one of the reasons, -why reform was so long delayed. - -There are, however, in this respect great differences between odours. -With some the smell is lost in a few seconds, while with others we -continue to be aware of it for a much longer time. Curiously enough, -odours seem, in this matter, to follow the general law of the feelings -in that the pleasant are lost sooner than the unpleasant. It is the -first breath of the rose that makes the fullest appeal, when the whole -being becomes for a moment suffused with the loveliest of all perfumes. -But only for a moment. All too soon the door of heaven closes and the -richness thins away into the common airs of this our lower world. - -On the other hand, the aversion we all feel from substances like -iodoform, or, what is worse, scatol, owes not the least part of its -strength to the fact that both of those vile smells are very persistent. -As was once said to a surgeon applying iodoform to a wound in a -patient’s nose: “This patient will certainly visit you again, sir, -but—it will not be to consult you!” - -To this more or less rapid exhaustion of the sense is due the merciful -dispensation that no one is aware of his own particular aura. We are -only cognisant of odours that are strange to us. The Chinese and -Japanese find the neighbourhood of Europeans highly objectionable, and -we return the compliment. It is the stranger to the Island who remarks -the “very ancient and fish-like smell.” - -Fatigue and then exhaustion of a sense-organ, rendering it finally -irresponsive to a particular stimulus, is, of course, familiar to us -also in the case of vision, as the soap advertisement of our boyhood -with its complementary colours taught us. Taste manifests the same -phenomenon, for which reason (so he says) the cheese-taster in Scotland -swallows a little whisky after each of the different samples he tries. -But, curiously enough, the healthy ear is not thus dulled save by a very -loud, persistent noise, and then there is the risk of permanent damage -to the hearing organ. Some forms of tactile sensation, also, would seem -to remain ever sensitive, for, although it may be possible to become so -inured to pain as to ignore it, yet that is probably a mental act, and -it is said, moreover, that men have been tortured to death by the -tickling of the soles of their feet. - -But, as we have already seen, of all the senses none so quickly becomes -inert under stimulation as olfaction. Why it would be hard to say, -unless, like the exhaustion of colour-vision, it is due to the using up -of some chemical reagent in the sense-organ. At all events, if you wish -to appreciate the full intensity of a smell, you should arrange to come -upon it from the open air. - -I wonder if this, or something like it, is the reason why England was -the first country in the world to wage war against its stenches. For the -English are of all races the most addicted to fresh air. Consequently, -they are the most likely to keep habitually their olfactory sense -unspoiled and virgin. This, I admit, is only pushing the matter a step -further back, and we are still left with the question: Why is it that -the English are so fond of the open? Largely, I imagine, because their -climate is so damp that an indoor atmosphere is always a little -oppressive to them. - -Whatever may be the reason, however, there is no doubt that the keen, -clean chill of an English April day, especially when the wind is in the -east (_pace_ Mr. Jarndyce), brings to us an exaltation of spirit that -surpasses the exhilaration of wine, and at the same time renders us -impatient with mustiness and fustiness, intolerant of domestic -stuffiness, and frankly disgusted with the pungent, prickly vapours of -intimate humanity in the mass. The wind on the hilltop is our -aspiration, our ideal. Hence, maybe, the Public Health Acts, and also -the national tub. - -The use of the domestic bath is, we must not forget, a social revolution -of our own day and generation. Our grandfathers ventured upon a bath -only when it seemed to be called for—by others. Our grandmothers, with -their clean, white cotton or linen undergarments, had, or thought they -had, even less need for it. Besides, in their prim and bashful eyes the -necessary denudation antecedent to total immersion would have amounted, -even when they were alone, to something like gross indecency. Before -their time, again, in the eighteenth century, matters were even worse, -for the society ladies of that day painted their faces _instead_ of -washing them, and mitigated the effects of seldom-changed underclothing -by copiously drenching themselves with musk and other reliable perfumes. -(I am told, however, that even to-day fashionable ladies refrain from -washing their faces!) - -The domestic bathroom is the direct offspring of the gravitation -water-supply and the modern system of drainage. Buy an old house, and -you will have to convert one of the bedrooms into your bathroom, and, to -this day, you must carry your bath with you if you go to reside in -certain of the Oxford colleges. - - -I can myself remember in my younger days in Scotland an old doctor -having his first bath in the palatial surroundings of a modern bathroom. -Not in his own house, needless to say! After a patient and particular -inspection of all the glittering taps of “shower,” “spray,” “plunge,” -and what not, he commended his spirit to the Higher Powers—or rather, I -fear, according to his wont, for he was not of the Holy Willie -persuasion, to the keeping of those of the Nether Regions. Then he -proceeded gingerly to insert into the steaming water first of all his -toes, then his feet, next his ankles, and so bit by bit, until, greatly -daring, he had committed his entire body to the deep—to emerge as soon -as possible! He was no coward, let me tell you, in the ordinary run of -life. But this was his first bath in the altogether since his primal -post-natal plunge. His first bath! And his last! It nearly killed him, -he said; never in all his life had he felt so bad, and not for a -thousand pounds would he repeat the experiment! - - -One more tale. Cockney this time. A gentleman of my acquaintance was one -day discussing with an old-fashioned baker the modern making of bread by -machinery. Both agreed that the older method made the better bread. The -new was not so good. “It seems,” said my friend, “as if nowadays bread -lacks something, but what that something is I cannot tell.” - -“You are puffickly right, sir,” returned the baker. “It does lack -something, and wot that something is I can tell you—it lacks the aromer -of the ’uman ’and!” - - - - - CHAPTER II - THE SENSE OF OLFACTION IN LOWER ANIMALS - - -Olfaction is generally felt to be the lowest, the most animal, of the -senses, so much so that in polite society it is scarcely good manners to -mention smells, and I am well aware of the risks I run in writing a book -on the subject. And yet this feeling is by no means false modesty, -because it is, first and foremost, to the animal in us that smell makes -its appeal. None of the other senses brings so frankly to notice our -kinship with the brute. - -Olfaction is, indeed, one of the primitive senses of animal life. And in -man, as it happens, while vision has constructed for itself a highly -complicated camera-like end-organ, and hearing has produced an apparatus -even more elaborate, the olfactory organ, on the other hand, remains -primitive, its essential structure having undergone no apparent -evolutionary change from the simplest and earliest type. - -This, perhaps, is scarcely the proper way of expressing the situation. -Evolutionary change has, as a matter of fact, occurred, but it reaches -its highest development not in man, but in terrestrial mammals otherwise -inferior to him—in the dog, for example. - -For once, man does not occupy the apex of the evolutionary pyramid. - -Olfactory development, high or low, is linked up with the natural habits -of the different species. Thus, mammals which go about on all fours, -whose visual outlook is restricted and whose muzzle is near the ground, -are the most highly gifted; those, again, like the seals, porpoises, -whales, and walruses, which have reverted from a terrestrial to an -aqueous environment, where smell is of less value to them, show poorly -developed olfactory organs; and finally, the apes and man, living -habitually above the ground, the former in trees, the latter on his hind -legs, and relying chiefly upon vision, also show a decline from the high -point reached by four-footed mammalians. - -The animals of this kingdom are thus divided into macrosmatic and -microsmatic groups. To the latter man belongs, but we must add that his -olfactory sense has not yet degenerated so completely as that of certain -other species (porpoises, etc.). - -It is, of course, common knowledge that in most of the animals we are -closely acquainted with the sense of smell is infinitely more delicate -and acute than ours, so much so, indeed, that the imagination can on -occasion scarcely conceive theirs to be of the same nature. As a matter -of fact, many authorities incline to the belief that not only mammalians -and other vertebrates, but also insects, must be guided to their food -and to their love-mates by some kind of perception, by some mysterious -sense, of which we are totally devoid. - -As this is a division of our subject of the highest interest, and one to -which we shall have occasion to recur at intervals throughout this -treatise, we shall discuss the matter as fully as the space at our -disposal will permit. - - -The unit of the olfactory sense-organ is the olfactory cell. This, which -does not vary in structure from one end of the animal kingdom to the -other, is microscopically seen to consist of an elongated body like a -tiny rod, bearing on its free end a small enlargement or prominence, on -the surface of which is a cluster of extremely fine protoplasmic -filaments, the olfactory hairs. These hairs project into and are -immersed in a thin layer of mucus, at all events in air-breathing -animals, an environment which is necessary for their functional -activity, because, if the nose becomes desiccated, as it does in some -diseases, the sense of smell is lost (anosmia). The hairs are, without -doubt, the true receptive elements of the olfactory cells. It is these -which come into contact with and are stimulated by odours—whatever the -nature of Odour may be. - -The deep (proximal) end of the rod-like olfactory cell tapers into a -nerve-fibre, which passes by way of the olfactory nerve to a special -lobe of the brain—the olfactory lobe—in the vertebrates, or to a -nerve-ganglion in the invertebrates. - -Olfactory cells in man are only found in the upper—the olfactory—region -of the nose, spread over a surface of about one square inch, the -olfactory area—part lying on the outer (lateral) wall of each nasal -passage and part on the septum, or partition between the nasal passages. -In macrosmatic animals the olfactory area is relatively greater than in -man, but there is apparently no other difference between them. - -Olfactory cells are held in place by ordinary epithelial cells—the -sustentacular cells—which contain pigment. Olfactory cells are found in -animals as low in the scale as the sea-anemone. They occur in the -integument of the animal, and their structure is the same as in man, the -only difference evolution has brought about being that in the higher -animals they are protected by lodgment in a _cul-de-sac_. Their function -in the sea-anemone is probably limited to the sensing of food, but we do -not yet know much about this particular organism. - - -It is otherwise with the olfaction of insects. Here the work of -painstaking observers like Lubbock, Fabre, and Forel, has supplied us -with a mass of information of the utmost interest, which we shall now -proceed to discuss in some detail, commencing with the work of that -remarkable French naturalist, Fabre, whose interest in the subject was -aroused by an accident—the accident of which the genius of observation -knows so well how to take advantage. - - -Having by chance a living female Great Peacock moth captive in his -house, Fabre was surprised one night by the advent of some forty others -of the same species—males in search of a mate. At once the question -arose in his mind: How was it that they had been attracted? - -Sight could not have guided them, because, apart from the comparative -rarity of this moth in that particular district, the night of their -arrival was dark and stormy, his house was screened by trees and shrubs, -and the female was ensconced under a gauze cover. He observed, besides, -that the males did not make straight for their objective, as is -characteristic of movement when directed by sight. They blundered and -went astray, some of them wandering into rooms other than that in which -the female was lying. They behaved, that is to say, as we ourselves do -when we are trying to locate the source of a sound or a smell. But sound -was ruled out by the fact that they must have been summoned from -distances of a mile or a mile and a half. - -Olfaction remains, and with this in his mind Fabre undertook several -experiments, some of which, as it happens, support, while others oppose, -the theory of an olfactory cause. - -When the female was sequestered under the gauze cover, and in drawers or -in boxes with loosely-fitting lids, the males always succeeded in -discovering her. But when she was placed under a glass cover, or in a -sealed receptacle, no male at all appeared. Further, Fabre found that -cotton-wool stuffed into the openings and cracks of her receptacle was -also sufficient to prevent the summons reaching the males. This last -observation should be borne in mind in view of further discussion later -on regarding the nature of the lure. - -Similar observations and experiments were made on the Lesser Peacock, -with very much the same kind of result. But in dealing with this moth -Fabre made an observation which, if it was accurate, tells against the -theory of olfaction, or at least against such olfaction as we ourselves -experience. At the time when he was carrying out his experiments the -mistral was blowing hard from the north, and as nevertheless males -arrived, they must all have come with the wind; no moth ever hatched -could beat up against the mistral. But then, if the guide is an odour, -the wind, blowing it to the south, would have prevented it ever reaching -the males! Here, then, we have a circumstance which leaves us groping -for an explanation. - -In watching the behaviour of the third moth on his list, the Banded -Monk, on the other hand, Fabre discerned a circumstance very strongly -suggestive of the operation of an odorous lure. He found that, if the -female was left for a time in contact with some absorbent material and -was afterwards shifted, the males were attracted, not to her new -situation, but to the place where she had originally been lying. -Subsequent experiment showed that a period of about half an hour was -necessary to lead to the impregnation of the neighbourhood with the -effluvium she elaborated. - -The obvious test was employed of trying to drown the supposed odour of -the female by filling the room she was in with powerful aromas, like -naphthaline, paraffin, the alkaline sulphides, and the like. But in -spite of the presence of these stenches, in our experience overwhelming -to fainter exhalations, the males still continued to arrive in droves. -This result led Fabre to doubt whether it could really have been an -odour that attracted them. But surely this negative conclusion ignores -the possibility of the moths being anosmic to these gross scents while -highly specialised for one particular olfactory stimulus to which, as a -matter of fact, we ourselves are wholly insensitive. - - -Apart from this particular problem, however, to which we return below, -biologists agree that insects undoubtedly possess an olfactory sense -capable of appreciating the same kind of odours as ours does. Lubbock, -for example, demonstrated that ants give signs of perceiving the -presence of musk and other perfumes. There is no doubt, indeed, that the -olfactory sense plays a great, it may be a preponderating part in their -life-activity. - -The olfactory organ of insects is situated at the bottom of little -crypts in the antennæ and in the palpi of the mouth apparatus, more -particularly in the antennæ. And those insects, like bees, wasps, -butterflies and moths, that frequent flowers, are attracted to them by -their perfumes as well as by their colours. It has been found, for -example, that covering up flowers from view does not put a stop to the -visits of insects. Some naturalists go so far, indeed, as to say that -odour is their principal guide. At all events, the sarcophagic and -stercophagic insects are attracted to their food chiefly, if not -entirely, by odour. Fabre has recorded how such insects are lured to -their death by certain insectivorous plants which exhale a smell like -that of putrid beef. - -In this connection I may interpolate here an experience which shows that -this class of insect may be attracted solely by odour. Incidentally, it -also manifests how the olfactory sense of insects can be utilised in the -matter of hygiene. - - A clever plumber of my acquaintance was once called to a large - drapery establishment in the West End of London, because the - dressmakers at work in one of the rooms were making complaints of an - evil smell that haunted the place. So much had they been troubled, - indeed, that several of them had been made ill by it. On examining - the workroom my friend found everything apparently faultless. It was - a large, well-lighted and airy apartment, and he himself was unable - to detect anything amiss in the atmosphere. Plans were consulted, - but no evidence could be found of any possible source of unpleasant - odour. His opinion therefore was, that the ladies were—ladies, that - is to say, fanciful, and the matter was dropped. But the ladies were - not consenting parties to this opinion, and the complaints - continued. More of the assistants fell ill as a consequence, they - said, of the smell, so that he was again sent for. On this occasion, - it being the height of summer, he called, on his way to the draper’s - emporium, at a butcher’s shop, and much to that man’s surprise, - asked permission to capture a few of his bluebottle flies. These he - took with him to the draper’s, and, the suspected room having been - emptied of furniture and occupants, he closed all the windows and - doors and released his flies. After waiting patiently for some time, - he observed that these amateur detectives of his had all made for - one part of the room, where they were settling on the wall. Here he - had an opening made, and found hidden behind the plaster an open - drain-pipe, old and foul, which had formerly been connected with a - lavatory, and had been enclosed and forgotten during some - alterations made on the building several years before. - -The olfactory sense of insects has been credited with perhaps even more -wonderful powers than those we have just been writing about. For -instance, both Lubbock and Forel have shown that the extraordinary -aptitude ants possess for finding their way back to their nest after -their peregrinations in the mazy labyrinth of their world depends upon -the sense of smell. On their return to the nest they follow the scent -left by their own footsteps. - -This “homing” instinct, or “orientation,” which is found in many species -of insects and animals, has long been a matter of interest to scientific -naturalists. The subject is, however, much too large for us to enter -fully into on the present occasion. - -Winged insects like bees and wasps manifest also the homing instinct. In -their case the return to the nest or hive is effected probably -altogether under the guidance of vision. This is what we should expect, -as elevation in the air secures for these creatures a wide and unimpeded -view of their world. Circumstances are obviously different in the case -of ants and other creeping things, whose immediate outlook, like that of -four-footed mammals, is circumscribed to an area of but a few inches or -feet at the most. - -Investigating the orientation of ants, Forel found, first of all, that -while the covering of their eyes with an opaque varnish “embarrassed” -them to some extent, they went hopelessly astray when their antennæ were -removed. - -He also repeated Lubbock’s well-known experiments of supplying the ants -with bridges over obstacles in the neighbourhood of their nests, noting -their behaviour when the bridges were changed, removed, or reversed, -with the result that he came to credit the olfactory system of ants with -much greater powers than the more cautious Lubbock would have believed. - -These insects, says Forel, exploring with their mobile antennæ the -fields of odour they encounter, form in their memory a kind of “chemical -topography.” - -Thus when an ant sets out from her nest she distinguishes the various -odours and varying strengths of odours she comes upon, noting and -memorising them as in two main fields, one on her left side, the other -on her right. In order to find her way back again all she has to do is -to unwind, so to speak, the roll in her memory, transposing right and -left, and this successfully accomplished will bring her back to the -point she started from. - -If, he concludes, we ourselves were endowed with such a perfect -olfactory mechanism situated in long, flexible whip-lashes, which we -could move and tap with each step, the world for us would be -transformed. Odour would become a sense of forms. Thus the orientation -of ants can be explained without assuming the existence of an unknown -sense. (It has recently been suggested, by the way, that bats owe the -exquisite power they manifest of steering their flight among obstacles -to the use of their squeaks, the echoes from which enable them to form -“sound-pictures” of their environment. In the same way a blind man in -the street tapping the pavement with his stick forms a more or less -well-defined sound-picture of the walls, doorways, and alleys about -him.) - - -In the immediately foregoing paragraphs we have been dealing with the -ability of insects to smell the smells that we smell. But Fabre’s -experiments have familiarised us also with the notion that there are -insects which can smell smells we cannot smell. - -We shall see in the following section that the same may also be true of -some of the higher animals. - - -In fish olfaction is, unlike that of air-breathing animals, effected by -odorous material in solution. Whether or not their olfactory sense is as -acute it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to say. -Anatomically the end-organ of fishes is simpler, but there are some -species, the dog-fishes for example, which possess a large olfactory -lobe in the brain; and this certainly suggests that they, at all events, -are gifted with an olfactory sense of relatively high development. - -Experiment on fish is difficult, nevertheless it has been definitely -proved that they do smell, and it seems probable that the sense is used -by them for food-perception. Moreover, that it may be highly sensitive -seems likely from the fact that sharks (which belong to the same order -as dog-fish) can be attracted from great distances to putrid meat thrown -into the water as bait, the high dilution of which resembles the -behaviour of odour in an air medium. - -The belief that life in water, however, is less favourable than life on -land to the fullest development of the sense is supported by the fact we -have already mentioned that mammals living in water are extremely -microsmatic. - - -In the macrosmatic terrestrial animals not only is the olfactory sense -relatively highly organised, but it is absolutely the predominant sense. -Vision is subsidiary to it. In their brains the olfactory region -constitutes by far the largest component. (The same, by the way, is true -of the Reptilia.) - -In other words, it is upon the olfactory sense that these animals -chiefly depend for their knowledge of the world. By it they are directed -to their food, warned of their enemies, and attracted to their mates. -Their universe is a universe of odour. - -In order to become more intimate with the details of this part of our -subject, we shall pass in review some of the olfactory habits and -characteristics of the macrosmatic animal most familiar to us, namely, -the dog. - -There can be no doubt of the all-important part that smell plays in the -life of the dog. Every one is familiar with it, and yet we do not often -stop to think what its meaning is for the canine brain and -understanding. One of the mysteries that must, one would suppose, for -ever remain hidden from us, is what aspect the world we both share in -company bears to this our closest animal friend. Who can tell what is -passing through his mind as he sniffs at us? He can recognise his master -by sight, no doubt, yet, as we know, he is never perfectly satisfied -until he has taken stock also of the scent, the more precisely to do so -bringing his snout into actual contact with the person he is examining. -It is as if his eyes might deceive him, but never his nose. - -The greyhound courses by sight, but all other dogs hunt by scent, and -the speed and certainty of foxhounds in full cry bear a new significance -when we recollect that it is scent that is directing them. Could vision -be any more swift and sure? - -We may heartily wish, as a child once remarked to a friend of mine, that -Rover had a prettier way of saying “How d’ye do?” to his canine friends. -But that and other even more objectionable habits do not prevent his -_entrée_ into the most exclusive circles of human society. He is taken -at his own valuation, and that, to be sure, is considerable. But the -minute, the meticulous, olfactory scrutiny he makes of other dogs is but -one more example of the predominance of this sense in his brain. (See -also later.) - - -When you take him for a walk also, how busy his nose makes him! -Burrowing here and there among the grass and undergrowth, picking up an -interesting trail that leads him a little way, until it crosses another, -fresher, perhaps, or more interesting, that has to be taken up—here a -cat’s, there a rat’s, further on a rabbit’s, and then, with short -squeals, scrapings in the ground, and buryings of his muzzle, a -weasel’s!—the whole intermixed and intermingled with whiffs of something -like old decayed bones, or of another and an unfriendly dog, or of some -ardent lady-love who has passed this way but shortly since!—is not this -a richer, a fuller, a more attractive, world than ours, with its fickle -sunlight, its pallid greys, its mournful purples, its unattainable -horizon-blue? For our life is primarily one of vision. - -I am sure his dreams, also, are compounded of the gorgeous odours of -some other world, such odours as even our woods in autumn know nothing -of. - - -But we must return again to science and Fabre. This time we shall -accompany him on an excursion with the wonderful dog who is trained to -discover for the _gourmet_ the truffles that are growing deep in the -soil. - -Left to his own devices, we learn, the truffle-hunting dog indicates the -position not only of truffles, but also of all manner of hypogean -(underground) fungi, “the large and the small, the fresh and the putrid, -the scented and the unscented, the fragrant and the stinking.” Only, he -never at any time indicates the presence of the ordinary mushroom, not -even while it is still underground, before it sprouts up as the fungus -we know. And yet to our nostrils the mushroom has the same smell as many -of the hypogean fungi he does indicate. Consequently, therefore, the dog -is not guided to the deep fungi by what may be called the general odour -common to all fungi. He must be able, that is to say, to distinguish the -hypogean varieties by some quality which is not odour, or, at least, not -odour as we understand it. - -There is, as it happens, something like a truffle-hunter among the -insects also, what is known as the Bolboceros beetle. This little -creature feeds on the _hydnocystis arenaria_, a hypogean fungus. Fabre, -having captured some of these insects, placed them on earth in which he -had buried the fungus at depths of six or seven inches. It was found -that the beetles, without making any trial bores, sank vertical shafts -through the soil direct to their food. - -We may insert here also, as bearing upon the problem which is now -emerging into clearness, an observation and a suggestion similar, as we -shall see, to that of Fabre, on the badger by Mr. Douglas Gordon -(_Spectator_, August 6th, 1921): - - “The real damage wrought by the badger is microscopic. His diet - mainly consists of roots, green herbs, mice, frogs, and insects. - Like the fox, he has a great partiality for whorts and blackberries - when in season, and he is particularly fond of grubs. For the sake - of these he will dig out every wasp’s nest he can find. A - considerable number of rabbit ‘stops’ also fall to his share, and in - unearthing the latter he practises a somewhat remarkable piece of - woodcraft. The hole which contains the nest may run to the depth of - several feet, and the nest itself be situated ten feet from any - entrance, but this does not trouble the badger. He makes no attempt - to follow the tortuous passage, as a man when digging would be - obliged to do. His unerring nose locates the exact spot where the - young rabbits lie, and from the most convenient point he bores for - them. Should it be a ‘ground-burrow,’ he sinks a vertical shaft. In - the case of a steep bank he drives a horizontal tunnel, and, shallow - or deep, with unvarying accuracy. - - “Not long ago I saw a striking case of this on Haldon Hill, near - Exeter. The burrow opened on to a little gully, and ran back some - distance under the heath. At least five paces from the nearest hole - was the badger’s freshly cut shaft, about three feet deep, and - around it were littered the ruins of the nest—the little tale of - bloodstained fur so eloquent of tragedy. There on the earth drawn - from the shaft the raider’s spoor was plain enough, but no imprint - of his pads could I find upon the impressionable mould anywhere near - the holes. This meant that he must have found the nest while - traversing the heather—sensed it beneath him, in fact. And here an - interesting point arises. What sense did he employ? Could he - possibly ‘smell’ the rabbits through three feet of packed mould? - Earth is a potent deodoriser. Do certain animals possess a sixth - sense—a sympathy something akin to that of the divining rod? If so, - this goes farther to explain the much-discussed principle of scent - than anything yet suggested.” - -Is this sense, then, as we see it in operation in the badger, in the -truffle-hunting dog, in the Bolboceros beetle, and still more -wonderfully in the Peacock and Banded Monk moths, drawn to their mates -“from the edge of the horizon,” and, it may be, against the wind—is this -sense the same as our own sense of olfaction, only much more acute? -Fabre finds some difficulty in believing that it can really be the same. -“Odour,” he argues, “is molecular diffusion.” But nothing material, -nothing our senses can perceive, is emitted by these moths, and yet they -can summon their mates from relatively enormous distances. However fine -may be the divisibility of matter, Fabre’s mind refuses to entertain the -suggestion that this far-flung summons is addressed to a sense of smell -of the same nature as ours. It would be tantamount, he says, “to -reddening a lake with an atom of carmine, to filling immensity with -nothing.” - -It is impossible not to sympathise with this opinion, but caution -compels us to say that for the most striking of these observations, that -of the calling of the males against a high wind, we should like to have -confirmation by some independent observer. - -Besides, I think perhaps Fabre would have hesitated to express his -scepticism regarding the power of insect olfaction had he known more of -the marvels of the human sense. - -Vanillin, for example, is perceptible by us as a smell when it amounts -to no more than 0·000000005 gram in a litre of air; and we can perceive -mercaptan, a substance with a garlicky odour, in a dilution of -1/460,000,000 of a milligram in fifty cubic centimetres of air -(approximately 0·0000000026 of a grain in a little over three cubic -inches of air!) (See also p. 108.) - -What is this but immensity filled with nothing? And yet we, even we, -microsmatic though we are, can perceive that “nothing.” - -But we must pick up again the thread of Fabre’s argument. Baffled as he -feels himself to be when he regards olfaction in the light of these -observations of his, he goes on: “For emission substitute undulation, -and the problem of the Great Peacock is explained. Without losing any of -its substance a luminous point shakes the ether with its vibrations and -fills a circle[1] of indefinite width with light.... - -Footnote 1: - - A sphere rather. - -“It does not emit molecules; it vibrates; it sets in motion waves -capable of spreading to distances incompatible with a real diffusion of -matter. - -“In its entirety smell would thus seem to have two domains: that of -particles dissolved in the air and that of ethereal waves. The first -alone is known to us.... - -“The second, which is far superior in its range through space, escapes -us altogether, because we lack the necessary sensory equipment. The -Great Peacock and the Banded Monk know it at the time of the nuptial -rejoicings. And many others must share it in various degrees according -to the exigencies of their mode of life.” - -In criticism of this conclusion of Fabre, however, we must again draw -attention to the fact that in the case of the Greater Peacock he found -that a plug of cotton-wool was sufficient to prevent the emanation -leaving the immediate neighbourhood of the female, a circumstance -strongly in favour of some material exhalation which was caught and held -by the cotton-wool filter. Again, in the case of the Banded Monk, the -suggestion of odour is unmistakable in the tainting, as it were, of -substances in her vicinity with her emanation. Further, if the guide to -the males were something like a luminous undulation we should expect -that, like the Bolboceros beetle and the badger, there would have been -no blundering and going astray; they would have precipitated themselves -straight on to the female, or as near to her as they could get. - -Moreover, although we are ourselves unable to detect any odorous -emanation, may not our inability be due simply to the fact that our -olfactory hairs are not susceptible to this particular stimulus? It may -be of the same nature as odour, and yet we may be unable to perceive it, -just as the moths themselves seemed anosmic to what we would call the -stenches Fabre filled his room with. - - -These critical questions seem to me to be difficult to answer. -Nevertheless, our imagination is certainly staggered by the fact of a -tiny creature like a moth being able to disseminate in the immensity of -atmospheric space an odour capable of perception at such great distances -as a mile or a mile and a half. Hero, with the Great Peacock’s power, -could have summoned Leander from a hundred miles away. - -Apart, however, from such considerations for and against his opinions, -one of the modern theories of odour, and of odour belonging to Fabre’s -first, or material, order, is, as we shall see later on, that even it is -a vibratory and not a material quality. - -But leaving that development aside, and admitting for the moment the -validity of Fabre’s contentions, I am bold enough to ask: Are we human -beings so ignorant of the second domain of olfaction as he supposes? Is -it true that we are, as he says, lacking in the equipment necessary for -the exploration of that mysterious region? To answering these questions -we shall presently address ourselves. In the meantime, I may forestall -what I shall then say by remarking that I count it a very remarkable -circumstance, if not, indeed, a significant coincidence, that, before I -had become acquainted with Fabre’s writings, I had, considering the -phenomena of human olfaction and psychology alone, actually asked myself -the same question as he asks, and had come to very much the same -conclusion. - - - - - CHAPTER III - OLFACTORY MEMORY - - -The predominant special senses in man are vision and hearing, olfaction -occupying a quite unimportant position in the scale. - -Smell and taste, by the way, are usually regarded not only as allied -senses, but also as if they were akin in their nature and function. -Allied they are, undoubtedly, seeing that both subserve the function of -food-perception. But the resemblance ends there. For, of the two, smell -is at once the more delicate and the more extensive in capacity, and, as -they differ widely in their anatomical structure, there can be no doubt -but that in physiological action also they are dissimilar. - -The taste-bulbs are capable of appreciating four sensations only, and -these quite simple, while the capacity of the olfactory organ, as we -shall see more fully later on, is practically unlimited. All the -subtlety of “taste,” all that we call “flavour,” is an olfactory -sensation. Thus, people devoid of the sense of smell cannot discern the -finer savours. They would be unable to distinguish, say, a vanilla from -a strawberry ice. All they could tell would be that both were cold and -sweet. - -The popular phrase which refers the appreciation of the finer shades of -taste to the “palate” we may therefore look upon as an attempt to -express the feeling that delicate flavours are sensed somewhere higher -up than in the mouth. So that a “man of taste” is really a man of smell, -and all the literary eloquence in praise of wine and dainty food, to say -nothing of the more prosy cookery books, is, in reality, a general hymn -of adulation offered unwittingly to the nose! - - -Compared with sight and hearing, however, smell in man is only one of -the minor senses. But, as if to make up for a position so inferior, it -is remarkable as being the most subtle of all our senses, possibly, as -some hold, because of the ancestral appeal to our (more or less -repressed) animal nature. So subtle is it, indeed, that I am persuaded -its stimuli may not, on occasion, emerge into consciousness at all. They -remain below the threshold. So that, although subjected to their -influence, we may remain ignorant of the cause of that influence. For -smell often operates powerfully, not only in surreptitiously enriching -and invigorating the mental impression of an event, but also in -directing at times the flow of ideas into some particular channel -independent of the will. The influence of the perfume of a woman’s hair -in unexpectedly arousing a feeling of intimacy will appeal to the male -reader as a good example of this upsurging interference with the placid -flow of normal ideation. - -Perhaps, also, this is the explanation of a strange and rather -unpleasant ghost-story I once heard. I dare not vouch for the truth of -it, but as it bears upon the subject we are considering, I give it here, -not without misgiving, for what it is worth. For the sake of -verisimilitude I shall relate it pretty much in the narrator’s own -words: - - “The evening he came back I was sitting in my room alone. I had just - got back from the play, the subject of which had been, it so - happened, the influence of people recently dead upon those left - behind. I suppose that’s what turned my mind to my sorrow of the - previous year when I lost him. It is my husband I am talking about. - - - “I was sitting gazing at the fire, and I expect you will say I had - fallen asleep. Perhaps I had. It doesn’t matter really. - - “We had been happy enough together, he and I. Just an ordinary - married couple, you might say. But now and then a terrible longing - would come over me just to see him once more, ... to hear him - speak, ... to touch him.... I know it is selfish, and maybe unwise, - to give way to those feelings, ... but never mind that! Well, on the - night I am telling you about, there came to my recollection some of - the silly cantrips those Spiritualist people used to carry on. Oh, - yes, it is quite true: I had gone once or twice to see them, and had - even taken part in their services—séances, I should say—in James’s - lifetime, I mean, before he died. Indeed I went with him.... I never - went after.... I don’t know.... It seemed to me like trifling - somehow. Anyhow I have never gone since. - - “All the same there came into my head a curious jingling rhyme I had - heard them repeat once or twice, because they said somebody called - Plato or Plautus or something had used it. It would bring back the - dead, so they used to say, if you recited it alone at midnight, and - accompanied it with certain gestures. The words are nothing but - gibberish, a jumbled sort of.... No, I’m not going to repeat - them.... Let me go on. - - “Before I had realised what I was doing, without stopping to think, - I uttered the words aloud, moving my arms so as to follow the - ritual. Scarcely were the syllables out of my mouth—it closes with - the name and the clock was striking twelve as I spoke it—scarcely, I - say, were the words out of my mouth when—God! the pang comes yet - when I think of it!—I heard the latch-key going into the hall door, - and the door slowly opening—I was alone in the flat, and—oh! I can - never tell you! I felt dreadful!—I didn’t know how to undo the - thing, and yet I knew it was wrong—wicked—I never for a moment - thought.—Perhaps it had been my longing so much.—The hall door - opened.—The chain wasn’t up.—I heard a step,—a cough—oh! the usual - sounds he used to make when he came in.—What would he be - like?—What...? what...? - - “Then the door of the room opened, and there he stood, swinging - himself backwards and forwards, half toes, half heels, in a way he - had, and replacing his jingling keys in his trouser-pocket—I could - only stare at him speechless, and gasp—till suddenly he stretched - out his hand and pointed at me with a ... a sort of snarl. - - “‘Good heavens, Jane!’—the words sounded so commonplace that every - trace of the unearthly was dissipated at the first syllable.—‘Good - heavens, Jane! Go and change that frock!—How often have I told you - what a fright you look in mauve.—A mill-girl on a holiday!—Come! Get - along and change it!’ - - “It seems silly, I daresay, and all that, but, do you know, no - sooner did I hear him growling and grumbling and finding fault with - colours he had a dozen times at least admired and praised than—I - couldn’t help it!—I forgot everything—everything. And all I could - say was: - - “‘James! You’ve been eating onions again!’ - - “‘Not my fault, I assure you, my dear,’ he snapped back; ‘that - damned cook always will put garlic in the nectar! You must get rid - of her.’ - - - “... I suppose I must have fainted then, for I remember no more till - I found myself lying on the floor with my head on the fender. I - picked myself up very puzzled as to what had happened. Then I - remembered my ... dream, with a shock rather of amusement than fear, - when suddenly—suddenly I smelled the nauseating stench of strong - garlic! That finished me entirely. How I got out of the place I - cannot tell. Out I did get. And I have never gone back.” - -This lady evidently would not have subscribed to the old teaching of -Salerno: - - “Six things that heere in order shall issue - Against all poisons have a secret poure. - Peares, Garlick, reddish-roots, Nuts, Rape and Rew, - But Garlick cheese, for they that it devoure - May walk in ways infected every houre; - Sith Garlick then hath poure to save from death - Bear with it though it make unsavoury breath: - And scorne not Garlick, like to some that think - It only makes men wink, and drinke, and stink.” - -(It may be remembered, by the way, that Wilkie Collins’s “Haunted Hotel” -was haunted by a smell.) - -Although we may agree with Shelley that - - “Odours when sweet violets sicken - Live within the sense they quicken,” - -yet we must admit that the memory of an odour cannot be reproduced in -our mind with the same clearness as a vanished scene or an old tune. - -It may be found on trial that by concentrating the attention strongly -upon some familiar smell, particularly if at the same time we stimulate -the memory by picturing in our mind’s eye a scene in which that odour -figured as a feature in the sensory landscape, we are sometimes able to -recall its actual sensation. But the recollection lacks the intimate -reality of visual and auditory images. Without doubt the mind’s eye and -mind’s ear, when consciously aroused, are consistently more acute and -their representations are more vivid than those of the mind’s olfactory -organ. - -When, for instance, I call to memory the drawing-room of my boyhood -days, I can once more catch a faint reminiscence of the acid-sweet -rose-leaves that filled it with perennial fragrance, but not until I -have first of all recalled its pale greys and blues and its over-bright -windows, not until I have listened once more to “The March of the -Troubadours” my mother is playing on the old rosewood piano, like a call -to some life greater, grander, and, above all, more simple than this -bewildering affair! - -People, Ribot has ascertained, vary considerably in their power of -resuscitating dead perfumes. According to his statistics, 40 per cent. -could not revive any image at all; 48 per cent. could recall some, but -not all; and only 12 per cent. could recall all or nearly all at -pleasure. The odours most easy to bring back were pinks, musk, violet, -heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the country, grass, and so on. -Many, as in my own case, have to evoke the visual image first. - - -But if the recollection of a scene can only with difficulty, or not at -all, revive the sensation of an odour, the converse is most startlingly -true. For odours have an extraordinary, an inexplicable, power of -spontaneously and suddenly presenting a forgotten scene to the mind, and -with such nearness to reality that we are translated bodily, being -caught up by the spirit, as it were, like St. Philip, to be placed once -more in the midst of the old past life, where we live the moment over -again with the full chord of its emotions vibrating our soul and -startling our consciousness. There are, it is true, certain sounds which -wield the same miraculous power over our being— - - “... the chime familiar of a bell - Last heard at sea, but now on homely ground, - Can, with the sprites that deep in memory dwell, - Create the world anew with stroke of sound, - Transforming daisied fields to foaming seas, - And changing vales from summer calm serene - To warring tides round wintry Hebrides - That fling and toss in wat’ry hillocks green”— - -but I do not think they operate in this way so frequently as do smells. - -This strange revival of bygone days by olfaction is, as I have said, -automatic. It is most clearly and completely to be realised when the -inciting odour comes upon us unawares, and then as in a dream the whole -of the long-forgotten incident is displayed, even although it may have -been an incident in which the odour itself was not specially obtrusive. -Yet the display is not only a spectacle, for we become, as I have -already laboured to point out, once more actors in the old life-drama. - -Now memory can nearly always be recognised as memory. There is about its -representations a dulling in colour, a haziness in outline, a vagueness -in detail, that serves to distinguish it from the harder, clearer -pictures of the imagination. Its figures and their doings are like -ghosts; through them you can see the solid furniture of to-day. But from -the olfactory miracle we are now considering the effect of time, the -fraying effect of time and superimposed incident, is absent. That is -still fresh, still, as we might say, in process of elaboration, the -manifold and complicated experiences we have undergone since its -occurrence being blotted for the moment out of the mind. - -Curiously enough, although Ribot finds that about 60 per cent. of people -experience the “spontaneous” revival of odour in memory, and so -presumably are subject to this arresting phenomenon, it does not seem to -have been mentioned by writers in general until about our own time. At -all events, the earliest allusion I can find to it is in “Les Fleurs du -Mal” of Baudelaire: - - “Lecteur, as-tu quelquefois respiré - Avec ivresse et lente gourmandise - Ce grain d’encens qui remplit une église - Ou d’un sachet le musc invétéré? - - “Charme profond, magique, dont nous grise - Dans le présent le passé restauré”.... - -Shortly after Baudelaire’s time Bret Harte, on the other side of the -Atlantic, imported it into “The Newport Romance”: - - “But the smell of that subtle, sad perfume, - As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast - The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, - Awakes my buried past. - - “And I think of the passion that shook my youth, - Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, - And am thankful now of the certain truth - That only the sweet remains.” - -But the most precise and definite allusion to this curious power of -odours seems to have first been made by Oliver Wendell Holmes in “The -Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” Here is what he says, and it will be -noted that he makes as high a claim for the power of olfaction as I have -done: - - “Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associations, are more - readily reached through the sense of SMELL than by almost any other - channel.” - - “Phosphorus fires this train of associations in an instant; its - luminous vapours with their penetrating odour throw me into a - trance; it comes to me in a double sense, ‘trailing clouds of - glory.’” - - “Perhaps the herb _everlasting_, the fragrant _immortelle_ of our - autumn fields, has the most suggestive odour to me of all those that - set me dreaming. I can hardly describe the strange thoughts and - emotions that come to me as I inhale the aroma of the pale, dry, - rustling flowers. A something it has of sepulchral spicery, as if it - had been brought from the core of some great pyramid, where it had - lain on the breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of - immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in its - lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills my eyes with - tears and carries me in blissful thought to the banks of asphodel - that border the River of Life.” - -In introducing the subject, Holmes states that he has “occasionally met -with something like it in books, somewhere in Bulwer’s novels, ... and -in one of the works of Mr. Olmstead.” - - -When one considers the obvious poetic appeal of this psychic phenomenon -as exemplified in the touching expressions we have just quoted, it seems -strange that the older writers made no use of it. - -Even omniscient Shakespeare, although odorous images and allusions are -not uncommon in his works, seems to have overlooked this sportive trick -of the sense. Otherwise we might have had Lady Macbeth sleep-walking -because her nightposset exhaled the vapour of the draught she had -drugged Duncan’s guards with. - -Several seventeenth century writers make a general reference to odours -as “strengthening the memory.” Here is one for which I am indebted to my -friend F. W. Watkyn-Thomas: - - “OLFACTUS (_loq._)— - Hence do I likewise minister perfume - Unto the neighbour brain, perfume of force, - To cleanse your head, and make your fancy bright - To refine wit and sharp invention, - _And strengthen memory_: from whence it came - That old devotion incense did ordain - To make man’s spirit more apt for things divine....” - - (“Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses,” - Act IV., Sc. 5, Anthony Brewer (_circa_ 1600): Dodsley’s “Old - Plays,” Vol. V., p. 179, 1825.) - -And Montaigne may be alluding to it when he says: - - “Physicians might (in my opinion) draw more use and good from odours - than they do. For myself have often perceived, that according unto - their strength and qualitie, _they change and alter, and move my - spirit, and worke strange effects in me_: Which makes me approve the - common saying, that invention of incense and perfumes in Churches, - so ancient and so far-dispersed throughout all nations and - religions, had an especiall regard to rejoyce, to comfort, to - quicken and to rowze and to purifie our senses, ...” - -The Jacobean herbalists and therapeutists in general, as we shall see -later on, frequently credit aromatics with the power of strengthening -the memory. But, so far as my reading goes, I have failed to find a -clear and unmistakable description of this peculiar phenomenon in any -writer prior to the nineteenth century. It is, of course, difficult to -prove a negative, and so it would not be surprising if some such -allusion were to be dug up. But even then the wonder would remain that -it had attracted little, if any, attention from others. As a matter of -fact, mental happenings of this order did not interest our forebears -much. Shakespeare is the exception to this statement, and that is one of -his claims to greatness. - - -Moreover, quite apart from this particular, the writings of the old -English poets and of such French and German authors as I am acquainted -with, seem curiously deficient in references to all but the more gross -and obvious phenomena of olfaction, and these are most frequently of the -farcical order, a little too gross and obvious for modern readers. - -Since Dickens’s time, however, we have had almost too much literary -odour. - -I do not agree with the purists who deny to Dickens the glory of a great -writer of English prose. Dickens was an impressionist, perhaps the first -and certainly the greatest of this school, and as such he was a master. -Few equal and none surpass him in the rare vigour of scene, and -portrait-painting. And it is significant to find him using the aroma of -the place and also of the person to impart life and reality to his -description. - -Take for example, to cite but one out of many olfactory references in -his books, the humorous analysis of the smells in various London -churches in “The Uncommercial Traveller.” One congregation furnishes “an -agreeable odour of pomatum,” while in the others “rat and mildew and -dead citizens” seemed to be the fundamentals, to which in some -localities was added “in a dreamy way not at all displeasing” the staple -character of the neighbourhood. “A dry whiff of wheat” circulated about -Mark Lane, and he “accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of -an aged hassock” in another. The reader’s throat begins at once to feel -dry. - -Then note how Mr. E. W. B. Childers starts from the page the moment his -creator breathes into our nostrils a breath of his life:—“a smell of -lamp oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust.” - -I could fill this book with olfactory citations from Dickens alone. But -to come to contemporary writers, those of Rudyard Kipling are almost as -plentiful, the smell that brings places to the mind being a favourite -with him. But I have always wondered how it came about that the highly -sensitive nose of Mr. Kipling permitted Imray’s corpse on the rafters -above the ceiling-cloth to remain undiscovered for as long as three -months. This in India. The bungalow, we gather, was haunted. It would -be. - -Nevertheless, in spite of the keen olfaction of both of those writers, -neither of them, as far as I can remember, weaves the memory-reviving -power of olfaction into a plot. We come across it, however, in foreign -literature, as in the suggestive play made with the smell of lamp-oil in -Dostoievsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” - -The more recent English and foreign writers, however, give us a surfeit -of odours—as if to prove their superiority in this as in all else. - - -It seems strange, moreover, that the theatre should have overlooked this -avenue to the memory and imagination of its audiences. The ancient -Romans, to be sure, during the gladiatorial games, used to perfume the -atmosphere of the Colosseum, whether to counteract the raw smell of -dust, blood, and sweat, it were hard to say, as these rank odours play -their part, again subtly, in stimulating the slaughterous passions of -mankind. - -But our modern theatre, which a prominent Scots ecclesiastic of the -nineteenth century characterised as redolent only of “orange-peel, -sawdust, and vice,” has not yet risen to anything higher than a -continuous discharge of incense during spectacular dramas depicting the -(theatrical) East. - -Why not go further? Think how the appeal of a love-scene would be -strengthened by an invisible cloud of roses blown into the house through -the ventilating shafts! The villain would be heralded by an olfactory -_motif_ of a brimstony flavour mingled, if he was of the usual swarthy -countenance, with a _soupçon_ of garlic. The hero, well groomed and -clean-limbed, would waft a delicate suggestion of Brown Windsor to the -love-sick maidens in the dress-circle. The heavy father would radiate -snuff with his red pocket-handkerchief. The large-eyed foreign -adventuress would permeate the auditorium on wings of patchouli. The -dear broken-hearted old mother would disseminate that most respectable -of perfumes (for there is a caste-system among smells) eau de Cologne—a -scent that always evokes in my mind a darkened room, tiptoes, hushed -voices, raised forefingers, and Somebody in bed with a—headache. - -And so on. Here is a new way of “putting it over.” - -Critics will object that, as the influence of eau de Cologne on my own -mind shows, the particular odours so supplied would defeat their purpose -by calling up a thousand different and incongruous images in the -thousand minds of the audience. But such mischances could easily be -avoided by conventionalising the odours after the manner already -familiar in the stock gesticulations of our players, all of whom enter, -sit down, pull off their gloves, blow their noses, utter defiance, shed -tears, launch curses, make love, live, die, and are buried, according to -an inveterate, cast-iron ritual. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - SMELL AND SPEECH - - -That the effect of odour upon the mind is largely concealed is further -illustrated by the curious fact that our native language does not -possess a terminology descriptive of smells. We never name an odour; we -only say it has a “smell like” something or another. As a matter of -fact, the same remark was made regarding French by P. P. Poncelet as -long ago as 1755. - -In this defect smell is unique among the senses. Even the sense that -governs equilibration, of which the consciousness in normal conditions -is never aware, has furnished us with “giddy” and “dizzy.” - -Vision is represented by hundreds of words. We have, for instance, names -not only for the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, but also for -many of their combinations. (In these remarks we are not including the -modern names given to the many shades of the synthetic colours.) - -If we take red as an example, we find scarlet, crimson, vermilion, and -pink. This colour, indeed, is ranked above all others in the vulgar -tongue as having shades, doubtless because red, being the colour of -blood and so of danger, always makes a strong appeal to the mind, an -appeal which, among the responses, has led to special names being given -to four of its tones. - -The sense of hearing again, upon which speech is wholly dependent, has -given rise to a multitude of words, many of them closely imitative of -the sound, or onomatopoetic, with which words English, like the related -German, is richly adorned. - -Touch also has produced a number of descriptive epithets—“hot,” “cold,” -“wet,” “dry,” “moist,” “clammy,” “rough,” “smooth,” as well as those -like “heavy” and “light,” from the deep tactile sensibility. - -Even taste has its vocabulary, a complete one, as it happens, since each -of the four varieties of taste has its own appropriate name—“sweet,” -“sour,” “bitter,” and “salt.” - -But smell is speechless. We can truthfully say that in our native -English language there is not a single word characterising any one of -all the myriad odours in the world. - -No doubt there are many words that we do apply to smells. But they are -either borrowed from the vocabulary of one of the other senses, in order -to describe a state of mind induced by the smell, or else they originate -from some known odoriferous object. - -Thus in the opening paragraph of this book we encountered a large number -of olfactory words. But they are all vague; some applying to pleasant, -some to unpleasant, odours. Many of them are very expressive, for -disgust begets strong language. But although our olfactory vocabulary -may be forceful, it is not discriminative. In other words, it is an -emotional, not an intellectual, vocabulary. - -These considerations will become more obvious as we deal with olfactory -epithets in detail. - -Thus smells may be “faint” or “strong,” but so may any other sensation. -And to call a smell “sweet” leaves it but vague, while at the same time -the epithet is borrowed from the vocabulary of taste, where its meaning -is quite precise. “Pungent” is also a transposition, this time from -touch, as it is a Latin word signifying “prickly.” - -In addition to such terms as these we have a small number of words which -we are in the habit of applying to certain classes of odours. “Musty” is -one of these. This adjective certainly has the look of a pure English -word about it, but, as it indicates a smell like that of mould, it is -probably derived from the Latin _mucidus_, mouldy; we cannot, therefore, -claim it to be English any more than we can claim it to be definite. -Perhaps the puff-balls of our autumn woods supply the best example of a -musty smell. - -“Mawkish,” however, is certainly English, as it is derived from an old -word, still used, by the way, in Scotland—“mauk,” a maggot. “Dank,” -again, means moist, and is the smell of damp, cold places. “Stuffy” -also, which is a modern application to a smell, is the odour of a close, -badly ventilated room, where we feel oppressed, as if half stifled. - -But these words—and there are not many more of them—are only applied -vaguely and to general classes of odours. We never say of any one in -particular that, _e.g._, “This is the smell called ‘dank,’” in the -precise way we can say: “That colour is green,” or “That sound is a -whistle.” - -We may even go further. We know that the flavour of things tasted is an -olfactory sensation. Now while language attains to precision in -characterising the sensations of pure taste, as we have just seen, it is -significant that flavours are left unnamed, except in the manner we have -just explained for olfactory epithets. - - -The scanty number of odorous terms in English has of late been copiously -added to by words borrowed from other languages, chiefly, it is said, -from the Persian. - -“Musk,” for instance, is Persian. “Aroma” is pure Greek, and if Liddell -and Scott’s suggested derivation of ἄρωμα (a spice) from the Sanscrit -_ghrâ_ (a smell) is correct, then the original meaning of “aromatic” is -merely “smelly.” “Mephitic,” not a popular word even now, comes from the -Latin _mephitis_, “a foul, pestilential exhalation from the ground, -often sulphury in character, as from volcanic regions.” The brimstone -odour of the devil—of which more anon—is mephitic. - -Now we must here discriminate. Etymologists, delving down among the -roots of our spoken language, come, so they say, to a point at which -even the simplest epithet, even the plainest description of a sensation, -is seen to derive from some object. Obviously this must be so in the -beginning, whether or not etymologists are always correct in their -particular ascriptions. An adjective describing, and later denoting, a -quality, is generalised from some object bearing that quality. A “stony” -countenance is a countenance rigid as stone. So in like manner, we are -told, even the names of colours, deeply embedded in the language though -they be, are ultimately referable to objects bearing that colour. -“Brown,” to take the least dubitable instance, is the colour of -burnt—“brunt”—things, while “blue,” according to authority, like the -Scots “blae,” means “livid” really, and is connected with “blow,” being -the colour left after a blow. (But we say “a black eye”!) - -Thus the descriptive epithets not only of smell, but also of sight, are -ultimately derived from objects. But there is this great difference -between them: the names of colours take us back to near the original -trunk from which the Aryan languages branch off, whereas the names of -odours, to this day still vague and indeterminate (at least in popular -phraseology), are derived from the spoken tongue of to-day, or, in some -cases, from foreign languages, and are, therefore, but recent additions. - -This delay in the naming of classes of odours justifies the statement -made at the outset of this section that smell is speechless. It shows, -in other words, that although, as we have seen, its influence upon the -mind may be profound, yet that influence does not extend as far as the -speech-centres. It remains largely in the subconsciousness. - - -We should be guilty of error, however, were we to conclude that the -scantiness of olfactory names is due to the lack of recognition by the -consciousness of early man of smell in general, or to a failure to -distinguish between different odours, because savages, in general less -discriminating and analytical than cultured races, have, there is every -reason to believe, a more acute and highly perfected olfactory sense. It -has been reported that the North American Indian was able to track his -enemy or his game by the scent alone, and Humboldt has recorded a -similar acuteness on the part of the Indians of Peru. While admitting -the marvellous skill of the American Indians in following up their -quarry, most of us will, I imagine, be inclined to doubt whether its -dependence upon smell is a true inference from the facts observed. Skill -in woodcraft can be brought to such marvellous perfection that it may -seem like magic to the onlooker—like magic, or like scent! - - -Further, although we are able to distinguish clearly enough between -different odours, the identification and the naming of odours does not -come easy to us. _Parfumeurs_ and druggists, no doubt, by the daily -education of the sense, attain to a high degree of skill in this art, -but those who have not cultivated their powers will find it very -difficult, as the amusing parlour-game of guessing the names of -concealed foodstuffs and spices shows. The difficulty is, like the -paucity of olfactory terms, probably due to an absence of ready -communication between the olfactory and speech centres in the brain. - - - - - CHAPTER V - SMELL IN FOLK-LORE, RELIGION, AND HISTORY - - -Evidence of olfactory influences is encountered in folk-lore not -infrequently, particularly in connection with primitive medicine, and -survivals of old olfactory methods of treatment are still extant, not -only in the doings of the wise women of our remoter country villages, -but also, as we shall see, in modern scientific medicine. - -Treatment by fumigation is perhaps the most widely prevalent of these. - -Probably the earliest motive for “smoking” a patient was merely the -replacing of an offensive by a pleasant odour, as we find it frequently -employed in malodorous conditions. Here the practice links up with -ancient ideas on epidemic diseases. - -Behind this rationale, however, there lies perhaps the idea of -association of death with the fœtor of decomposition and the expectation -that a pleasant aromatic odour will naturally “obviate the tendency to -death.” This view of the matter must have become strengthened among -nations like the ancient Egyptians, who had discovered that aromatic -substances might be relied upon to preserve the body after death. Even -in recent times and countries similar customs have prevailed. Scott in -“The Bride of Lammermoor” tells us that rosemary, southernwood, rue and -other plants were in Scotland strewn on the body after death, and were -“burned by way of fumigation in the chimney.” - -Be that as it may, we find fumigation employed all over the world as a -rite of purification, particularly during the menstrual and puerperal -periods, women being at those times regarded as unclean or taboo. - -Later, in the natural course of evolution, fumigation comes under the -category of anti-demoniac remedies. - -When disease was ascribed to the operation of demons in residence in the -patient’s body, a belief at one time world-wide in its distribution, the -treatment mostly relied upon to cure the disease, and, granting the -premises, a perfectly rational therapeutic method, was by various -devices to render the patient’s body too uncomfortable for the demon. -And among many other modes of securing this desirable end was the -smoking of the demon out by strong odours, fumes being generated around -the patient by burning horns, hair, and certain odoriferous woods and -plants. Among the Chippeway Indians, we are told, a species of cypress -was set on fire for this purpose, and the efficacy of the remedy was -heightened by the needle-shaped leaves of the tree flying off and -sticking in the spirit. - -Sometimes a medical man may feel disposed to smile when he sees the -priest in church “censing” the Bible in order to drive away the evil one -before he begins to read it. Yet fumigation has lingered on long in -medicine as well as in religion. During the severe epidemics of cholera -in Egypt not so many years ago, hundreds of pounds weekly were spent -upon bonfires of sulphur in the streets of Cairo, a method of -disinfection more likely to drive off demons than to destroy the comma -bacillus in the drinking-water! - -In mediæval, Jacobean, and Georgian medicine, fumigation was a favourite -remedy. Every one, for example, is familiar with the old-fashioned -treatment of fainting by burning feathers under the nose. And perfumes -and aromatics in general were widely used in the medicine of those days, -as the following extract from Salmon’s “Dispensatory” (1696) shows: - - “_Balsamum Apoplecticum Horstii_, Apoplectick Balsam of Horstius. - - “_Take of the Oils of Nutmegs_ ℥i, _of white Amber rectified_ ℥ʃ, - _Roses (commonly called Adeps Rosarum) of Cinnamon_ A. ℈i., _of - Lavender_, _of Marjoram_ A. grs. xv. _of Benjamin_, _of Rue_ A. ℈ʃ - _of Cloves_, _of Citrons_ A. grs. iv. _Mix all well together, then - add Ambergrise_ ʒʃ, _Oriental Civet_ ℈iv., _Choice Musk_ ʒi. _Mix - all according to Art, to the just consistence of a Balsam._ - - “_Salmon._ The Oil of Nutmegs is that made by expression, all the - rest are Chymical. _Horstius_ saith, that in the whole Republick of - Medicine, there is scarcely found an Apoplectick Balsam more - illustrious for Fame, more noble for Virtue, more worthy for Honour, - more ready for Help, and more fragrant for smell, than this. It - chears and comforts all the spirits, natural, vital, and animal, by - anointing the extremities of the Nostrils and the Pulses. It cures - Convulsions, Palsies, Numbness, and other Diseases proceeding of - cold.” - -The modern physician may think this Balsam “apoplectick” in a sense -never dreamt of by its author; nevertheless he must also sigh for the -faith that believed all those wonders. - -Here is another from the same source for “the strengthening of memory”: - - “_Balsamum Maemonicus_ (sic) _Sennerti_. Balsam for the loss of - Memory. - - “℞ _of the juices of Bawm_, _Basil_, _flowers of Sage_, _Lillies_, - _Primroses_, _Rosemary_, _Lavender_, _Borrage_, _Broom_, A. ℥ii.; - _Aqua Vitae_, _Water-lillies_, _Roses_, _Violets_, A. ℥i.; _Cubebs_, - _Cardamoms_, _Grains of Paradise_, _yellow Sanders_, _Corpo - balsamum_, _Orrice_, _Saffron_, _Savory_, _Peony_, _Tyme_, A. ℥ʃ; - _Storax liquid and Calamita_, _Opopanax_, _Bdellium_, _Galbanum_, - _Gum of Ivy_, _Labdanum_, A. ʒvi.; _Roots of Peony_, _long - Birthwort_, _Oils of Turpentine_, _Spike_, _Costus_, _Juniper_, - _Bays_, _Mastick_, _Baben_, _Lavender_, A. ʒv. _Pouder them that are - to be poudered, then mix and distil in an Alembick, with a gradual - fire; separate the Balsam from the Water._ - - “_Salmon._ In this we have put flowers of Sage instead of Mynica or - Tamarisk: otherwise it is _verbatim_. It is a truly noble Cephalick, - and it is reported to cause a perpetual memory, both Water and - Balsom are excellent good against all cold Diseases: you may anoint - the hinder part of the Head, the Nostrils and Ears therewith. Dose - gut. iii. ad vi. This is that Balsam which _Charles_, Duke of - _Burgundy_ bought of an English Doctor for 10000 Florentines.” - -It is to be noted, by the way, the odours do not “strengthen the memory” -as a whole; what they do is to revive special memories. - - -The use of perfumes like camphor to ward off infection has long been in -vogue. The pompous doctors of Hogarth’s time—just 200 years ago—carried -walking-sticks the hollow handle of which formed a receptacle for -camphor, musk, or other pungent substances, which they held to their -noses when visiting patients, to guard against the smells that to them -spelt infection. And the air of the Old Bailey used to be, and indeed -still is, sweetened with herbs strewn on the Bench, lest the prisoner -about to be condemned to death by the rope might return the compliment -and sentence his judge to death by gaol-fever. To this day, also, herbs -are strewn about the Guildhall on state and ceremonial occasions, an -interesting survival. - - -Demoniac possession was also largely responsible for the nauseous and -disgusting remedies of which early medicine, both among the folk and -among the more educated medical men, was very fond. - -Paracelsus was a great believer in such concoctions, one of which, -_zebethum occidentale_, was his own invention. Fortunately I am not -compelled to divulge the constitution of this remarkable remedy. All I -need say is that it was by no means the “cassia, sandal-buds, and -stripes of labdanum” of Browning’s “Paracelsus”! - -Those unspeakable medicaments were (and are still) sometimes applied -externally, sometimes administered internally. One of the most absurd -variants of this class was the holding of divers foulsmelling mixtures -under the patient’s nose for the cure of hysteria, the idea being that -the stench would repel the “mother” from the patient’s throat, whither -it had wandered through sheer boredom and lack of interest elsewhere. - -Nevertheless, out of these most absurd and to us meaningless methods of -treatment modern medicine has here and there selected remedies which -experiment and experience have proved to be of value; valerian, for -example, which is still largely employed for hysterical conditions, and -asafœtida (popularly named “devil’s dung”). - -As a matter of fact, many pungent, strong-smelling substances are -powerful cardiac and muscular stimulants. - - -Nor must we overlook the carminatives, the pleasantly smelling dill, -aniseed, rue and peppermint, the very names of which bring to our minds -the sweetness of old country places and the efforts, not always vain, to -quiet screaming country babies! Well are they named the _carminatives_, -acting as they do “like a charm.” - - -In the Æneid we are told how once upon a time his divine mother was -revealed to pious Æneas by a heavenly odour. And although Lucian -intimates that the gods themselves enjoyed the smell of incense, yet, -according to Elliot Smith, the real object of incense-burning was to -impart the body-odour of the god to his worshippers. Something of the -kind, whatever the primary motive may have been, must have been needed, -one would imagine, to drown the unpleasant smells from the abattoirs in -the temples where the sacrificial animals were slaughtered. - -The wrath of the Lord God of the Hebrews after the Flood, it will be -remembered, was appeased when he smelled the sweet savour of the burnt -offerings of Noah on his emergence from the Ark. The sacrifice was, of -course, the meal of the god, the flesh of bullocks, rams, doves, and -what not, being spiritualised by the flames and so transformed into food -a spirit could absorb. The Greek gods, it is true, refreshed themselves -with such ethereal delicacies as nectar and ambrosia, but they were by -no means indifferent to the square meal of roast beef so punctiliously -provided for them by human purveyors. Homer is always careful to mention -that, as often as a feast was toward, neither the gods nor the bards -were forgotten, the former being fed before and the latter after the -heroes themselves had been satisfied. - -When, following the Persian division of the unseen world of spirits into -good and bad, the idea of an evil-minded and consistently hostile god -became popular, his odour was naturally enough the opposite of that of -the kindly gods. And as in time he came to assume some of the attributes -of the Roman _di inferni_, he, like the dragons of an even greater -antiquity, sported the sulphury odour of his underground dwelling. - -The Northern nations of ancient Europe, Grimm tells us, believed that -hell was a place of burning pitch, whence arose an intolerable stench. -Our English word “smell” is obviously related to a German dialect word -for hell—_smela_—which in turn is itself akin to the Bohemian _smola_, -resin or pitch. - -The Christian “hell” was thus the lineal descendant of the subterranean -“Hades” of the pagans, and what its stench was like may be gathered from -that of the noxious fumes that rise out of clefts in volcanic rocks, -such fumes, we may suppose, as in earlier days threw the Oracle at -Delphi into her prophetic trances. (Some authorities, however, say that -it was the smoke of burning bay-leaves that the Oracle inhaled.) - -The offensive odour of hell adheres to all the devils right down to -modern times. In the Middle Ages you could always tell the Evil One by -his sulphurous stink, but, unfortunately for the tempted, it was not -usually observed until after his departure. - -But evil odours not only attended the devil himself: they were also -generated by the sins. For St. Joseph of Copertino, “seeing beneath the -envelope of the body,” was able to recognise the sins of the flesh by -their odour. And St. Paconi, so it was said, could even smell out -heretics in his day, presumably in the same way as witches are now -discovered in Africa. - -Moreover, as the devil and his minions are attended with a vile smell, -the odour of their infernal home, so naturally they detest what we call -sweet and aromatic perfumes and are repelled by them, as the following -tale from Sinistrari of Ameno shows. I give it _verbatim_ as it appears -in Sax Rohmer’s “Romance of Sorcery”: - - “In a certain monastery of holy nuns there lived as a boarder a - young maiden of noble birth who was tempted by an Incubus, that - appeared to her by day and by night, and with the most earnest - entreaties, the manners of a most passionate lover, incessantly - incited her to sin; but she, supported by the grace of God and the - frequent use of the Sacraments, stoutly resisted the temptation. But - all her devotions, fasts, and vows notwithstanding, despite the - exorcisms, the blessings, the injunctions showered by exorcists on - the Incubus that he should desist from molesting her, in spite of - the crowd of relics and other holy objects collected in the maiden’s - room, of the lighted candles kept burning there all night, the - Incubus none the less persisted in appearing to her as usual in the - shape of a very handsome young man. - - “At last among other learned men whose advice had been taken on the - subject was a very erudite Theologian, who, observing that the - maiden was of a thoroughly phlegmatic temperament, surmised that the - Incubus was an aqueous demon (there are in fact, as is testified by - Guaccius, igneous, aerial, phlegmatic, earthly, subterranean demons, - who avoid the light of day) and prescribed an uninterrupted - fumigation of the room. - - “A new vessel, made of glass like earth, was accordingly brought in, - and filled with sweet cane, cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies, - great and small cardamom, ginger, long-pepper, caryophylleae, - cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmegs, calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes - wood and roots, one ounce of triapandalis, and three pounds of half - brandy and water; the vessel was then set on hot ashes in order to - distil the fumigating vapour, and the cell was kept closed. - - “As soon as the fumigation was done, the Incubus came, but never - dared enter the cell; only, if the maiden left it for a walk in the - garden or the cloister, he appeared to her, though invisible to - others, and, throwing his arms around her neck, stole or rather - snatched kisses from her, to her intense disgust. - - “At last, after a new consultation, the Theologian prescribed that - she should carry about her person pills made of the most exquisite - perfumes, such as musk, amber, chive, Peruvian balsam, etc. Thus - provided, she went for a walk in the garden, where the Incubus - suddenly appeared to her with a threatening face, and in a rage. He - did not approach her, however, but, after biting his finger as if - meditating revenge, disappeared, and was nevermore seen by her.” - - -On the other hand, the odour of sanctity in mediæval times was a much -more real perfume than that in which the Jackdaw of Reims died. It does -not seem, so far as I can make out from my reading, that the sweet smell -of the Saints was ever remarked in the early centuries of the Christian -era. The odour diffused around his pillar by St. Simeon Stylites, for -example, was by no means pleasant. But by A.D. 1000 the sweetness of the -Saints’ persons was beginning to pervade the religious atmosphere. -Writing about that time, Odericus Vitalis tells us that “from the -sepulchre of St. Andrew” (at Patras, Asia Minor) “manna like flour and -oil of an exquisite odour flow, which indicate to the inhabitants of -that country” what the crops will be like that year. And the example -thus set by this apostle is followed by all other saintly personages for -many centuries. - -In England, we read that when the Blessed Martyr Alban’s burial place on -the hill above Verulamium was opened, in obedience to a sign from heaven -in the shape of a flash of lightning, the good people were enraptured by -the delicious fragrance of the Saint’s remains, and the same -characteristic attended those of the later martyr Thomas à Becket. - -St. Thomas à Kempis is credited with the statement that the chamber of -the blessed Leduine was so charmingly odorous that people who were -privileged to enter it were delighted, and wishing to enjoy her perfume -to the full, were wont to approach their faces close to the bosom of the -Saint, “who seemed to have become a casket in which the Lord had -deposited His most precious perfumes.” After the death of St. Theresa a -salt-cellar which had been placed in her bed preserved for a long time a -most delicious odour. And so on indefinitely, some of the stories being, -as might be expected, a little too plain-spoken and artless for modern -readers. - - -It is difficult to account for the pleasant odour of Saints whose pride -it was to live without change of raiment, to harbour parasites, and to -abstain from washing. Nevertheless that certain persons exhale a -naturally pleasant aroma from their bodies is true. Alexander the Great -is noted by Plutarch as having so sweet an odour that his tunics were -soaked with aromatic perfume, and taking a flying leap through the pages -of history, we come to Walt Whitman, who had the same characteristic. -Indeed, a piny aromatic odour, of considerable strength, is occasionally -noticeable in certain people, and I can myself testify that it becomes -stronger on the approach of their death. - -We are not often told when historical heroes were unpleasant in this -respect, but in the case of Louis XIV. we have the authoritative -evidence of Madame Montespan, who after their “divorce, when having a -public set-to with her sun-god in the glittering _salles_ of Versailles, -discomfited that little, red-heeled, bewigged, and pompous mannikin with -the following broadside: - -“With all my imperfections, at least I do not smell as badly as you do!” - -His ancestor, “Lewis the Eleventh,” says Burton in “The Anatomy of -Melancholy,” “had a conceit everything did stink about him. All the -odoriferous perfumes they could get would not ease him, but still he -smelled a filthy stink.” - -A modern rhinologist would suspect this monarch of having been afflicted -with maxillary antrum suppuration. It will be noted, however, that there -is no record that the odour he himself perceived was perceptible to -others. The fœtor, as we say, was subjective, not objective, in which -respect it differed from that of another historical personage, Benjamin -Disraeli to wit, who was the subject probably of the disease known as -ozæna. (See later.) - - - - - CHAPTER VI - THE ULTIMATE - - -In a former chapter we dwelt upon the curious fact that memories aroused -by olfactory stimuli are independent of the will. Now there is yet -another way in which smell ignores the head of the cerebral hierarchy. - -Although on occasion confining its operations to the subconsciousness, -and exercising, so to speak, only a backstairs influence upon the mind, -olfaction much more frequently insists upon recognition, breaking in -upon our privacy, like a disreputable acquaintance, at most inopportune -moments. - -If you do not wish to see you can look the other way. When you would -rather not hear you can be inattentive. A proffered handshake you can -ignore. A dish you dislike you may decline. But you can’t help -smelling—no, not even if you turn up your nose. - -Olfaction is thus the great leveller among the senses, equality having -here a reality but rarely found elsewhere. For odour makes its way into -the nose of king and cadger, duke and drayman, lady and lout, -indifferently. Nay, by an ironical law of olfaction the fœtors are more -powerful than the fragrances, and vervain the feeble turns tail before -the onslaught of scatol (as well it might, indeed!), in which case there -is nothing to be done but to bear it (without the grin mostly); or to -follow the wise example of vervain; or to remove the offence, as we have -done in England these latter days, only to render ourselves, as I have -carefully pointed out in Chapter I., all the more sensitive to it when -it does come. - -To many of us it comes on the dog. - -This animal has a regrettable fondness for wallowing, diligently and -with forethought, in the Abominable, until his coat is thoroughly well -impregnated. For no other reason, I do verily believe, than, as he -thinks, to give his human friends for once some of the olfactory -pleasure he himself enjoys. A treat he thinks it, without any doubt. -Just look at the smirk of pride and satisfaction on his face as he trots -in and resumes his place on the drawing-room hearthrug and the amazement -with which he receives the sudden toe of your boot! - -And yet he rolls himself over on the odoriferous for the same reason -that a fashionable lady has orris-root put in her bath; namely, for the -pleasure and gratification of society at large. There are who say that -my lady’s perfume seems as vile to her Pekinese as his then does to her! -If so, he is the more tolerant animal of the two. - -Anyhow, he certainly has the knack of thrusting the Unmentionable upon -the attention of the most fastidious, and smell is no longer speechless. - - -Now, if we are to treat fully of things olfactory, we must at least take -cognisance of the Unmentionable. But to extend our notice would take us -across the garden to the muckrake and the dunghill. And such nearer -investigation and description I must decline, even although in these -days of outspokenness I may have to apologise for Victorian -squeamishness. To attain merit as a writer the advice now given you is: -Be frank! And if you disgust, why, so much the better! - -That may be so. I do not question the value of the advice, not for a -moment. All I say is that I prefer not to take it. And if somebody else -desires this particular laurel-crown, this crown of tainted laurel, he -shall wear it without arousing any envy upon my part, albeit, as I know -full well, this is a branch of the subject which illuminates many -obscurities and seeming eccentricities in human conduct. I know all -about that, but, as Herodotus so often says, I am not going to tell all -I know, although, I fear, an allusion or two may be necessary. - -We may take it as on the whole true that a repulsive odour is a -dangerous odour. Not invariably, however. Otherwise grouse in their -season would not be esteemed a dainty and Gorgonzola would everywhere be -buried. Nevertheless in these high realms palatability is limited to -quite a narrow streak. There is a level beyond which the boldest -gastronomic adventurer dare not climb. - -It is remarkable that the liking for half-decomposed food, although an -acquired taste, is found everywhere in the world, among savage and -civilised, rich and poor, high and low—but not among young and old. For -young people do not usually approve of such _recherché_ flavours. It -would be a mistake, however, to argue from that fact that these savoury -meats act as fillips to a sense jaded with age, because it is generally -agreed that neither smell nor taste declines in acuteness as we grow -old. On the contrary, they become more instructed, more particular, more -delicate. Appetite declines if you like, but taste and smell abide -increasingly unto the end. - -Nevertheless we can only look upon this particular liking as acquired, -since the high relish of one country but fills its neighbours with -disgust. - -It is worthy of remark, perhaps, that the last whiff, the final -sublimated breath of ripe Gorgonzola as it passes over, is a faint -suggestion of ammonia. Curiously enough, this always fills my -imagination with the sack of cities and the end of all things in smoke -and thunder. It may be because the penultimate phase of life itself is -ammonia. Fire, slaughter, and much more besides come quite promptly to -this gas for the City of Destruction, what there is left of the -remainder in dust and ashes being but a handful for the wind. - - -To the keen-sensed medical man certain morbid states can be recognised -by their exhalations. I have even heard of an enthusiast on the subject -who alluded to them as “both visible and tangible”; but that, I think, -must be exceptional. - -Physicians of the last generation used to speak of typhus fever as -having a close, mawkish odour, and the smell of smallpox is horrible. -But these, as well as the appalling stench of the hospitals in olden -days, are among the smells which have, for the most part, fled our -country. - -There are others, however, less powerful and repugnant, which are still -with us, and which we recognise as among the prominent characteristics -of certain maladies, the acid smell of acute rheumatism for one, and I -have sometimes thought I could detect a characteristic odour also in -acute nephritis, a smell resembling that of chaff. The odour of a big -hæmorrhage is unmistakable and, to obstetricians particularly, ominous. - -Then there is the smell of mice which attends upon the skin disease -known as favus. - -The breath of a chronic drunkard is familiar enough to everybody, and -the more delicate aroma in the circumambient atmosphere of the careful -tippler, ethereal and by no means unpleasant, will often reveal to the -physician the hidden cause of obscure symptoms. It is particularly -valuable when your patient is, as so many of these secret drinkers are, -a woman, it may be a woman of good social standing. - -A disease-odour of great value and significance is the sweet-smelling -breath caused by acetone poisoning in the later stages of diabetes. - -A sweet smell is also said by Bacon to attend plague: - - “The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath - been said. And they report that, where it is found, it hath the - scent of a smell of a mellow apple; and (as some say) of - May-flowers; and it is also received that smells of flowers that are - mellow and luscious are ill for the plague, as white lilies, - cowslips and hyacynth.” (Quoted by Creighton, “A History of British - Epidemics,” p. 685, f.n.) - - -Death sometimes heralds his approach by means of an odour, said in some -parts of the country to bring ravens about the house, which may well be -true, as it is apparently a summons of the same nature that calls the -Indian vulture in flocks from apparently untenanted skies. Birds in -general, however, seem to belong to the microsmatic group of animals, -relying chiefly upon their vision, which is often highly perfected, -particularly for distance. - - -Much has been made, too much perhaps, of the part played by olfaction in -the sex-life, and its undoubted prominence in the coupling of -four-footed animals is pointed to as an indication of its potency in -mankind also. But the reasoning is fallacious. Olfactory influences -predominate in these animals simply because olfaction is their principal -sense. - -Among birds, now, courtship and marriage are conducted without any -apparent aid from olfaction, and in no group of beings, not even in -mankind, is the poetic side of courtship, both before and after -marriage, so highly developed and so beautifully displayed. In their -love-making the birds appeal to each other through the ear in their -songs, and through the eye in the nuptial splendours of the male, -splendours which he parades with glorious pomp before what often seems -to be, indeed, but a lackadaisical and indifferent spouse. - -As we have already seen, this independence of olfactory stimuli is, so -far as obvious indications go, also the case with human lovers. True, we -have numerous references by poets to the sweetness of their ladies’ -breath, only one, as far as I know, being blunt enough to say: - - “And in some perfumes there is more delight - Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” - -But the sum and substance of Havelock Ellis’s exhaustive inquiry on this -point is undoubtedly this, that if a lover loves the aroma of his lady, -that is because of his love, not because of her inherent sweetness. In -other words, the attraction, subtle though it be, at least in the early -or romantic stage, is seldom or never obviously olfactory. It is the -suggestion of closer intimacy that constitutes the attraction of her -nearer environment, and this suggestion is the offspring of the lover’s -imagination. - -As to the influence of her personal emanation in the second, the -realistic, stage, there also, it would seem, its power is subsidiary, -certainly to that of touch, although more active than that of sight and -hearing, seeing that the holy of holies is only unveiled in darkness and -in silence. - -As for our opinion in everyday life, I think most people will subscribe -to the old adage “_Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet_.” - - - - - CHAPTER VII - SMELL AND THE PERSONALITY - - -Whatever of myth there may be in the quaint stories we related in -Chapter V., there is no doubt about this, that there is great variety -among different individuals in respect to their personal atmosphere. I -mean the natural atmosphere of the person, of course, not the artificial -airs that surround and envelop the beperfumed modern lady. - -There is no need to enlarge upon this branch of our subject. Those who -are curious about it may apply themselves to Havelock Ellis for more -detailed information. What I am concerned with here is something much -less commonplace and obvious, the question, namely, whether we -disseminate and receive, each of us, anything less material than the -odours we are conscious of. - -In addition to his other olfactory accomplishments, our friend the dog -seems to be able to distinguish by smell when a strange dog is to be -cultivated as a friend or wrangled with as a foe, and nothing is more -amusing to watch than the careful and even suspicious olfactory -investigation two dogs meeting for the first time make of each other’s -odours, during which exchange of credentials a state of armed neutrality -exists, to pass, apparently as a result of some mysterious olfactory -decision, either into frank, open, and unchangeable hostility, or into -friendship equally frank, open, and unchangeable. - -But what it is that makes one dog smell to another of enmity or of -friendship is as mysterious as—the mutual attraction or repulsion felt -for each other by two human beings, shall we say? For, of course, this -suspense of judgment on encountering a new-comer is a human no less than -a canine trait. There were physiognomists before Lavater, since we are -naturally influenced by what our senses, and especially our eyes and our -ears, tell us about a person we are meeting for the first time. We like -the look of the man, his expression, his smile, the character of his -movements, bodily as well as facial; we find the intonation of his -voice, his accent, his laugh, agreeable. Or we don’t. And our decision -is curiously independent of his moral character, even after we have got -to know that side of him. Now, this act of judgment seems to us to be -quite independent of any olfactory evidence. We rely upon our -predominant senses just as the dog relies upon his. Yet I sometimes -catch myself wondering whether olfaction, olfaction rarefied and refined -beyond imagining, does not without our knowledge play some part in our -estimate of the pros and cons in character. - -What is conveyed to us by the “personality” of a man? Here we have -apparently a complex of sense-impressions, for the most part vague, -which we are seldom able to analyse, even to ourselves. Still less can -we put it into words capable of conveying our impression to other -people. “There is _something_ about him that I like” is about the -sum-total of our attempts at description. - -And if this be true as between man and man, it is even more often -remarked as between man and woman. Meredith it is, I think, who says -that the surest way to a woman’s heart is through her eye. Fortunately -for most of us, his dictum is open to question. Otherwise the human race -would soon come to an end. Now, although, unlike Meredith, I cannot -claim the rank of a high-priest in the temple of Venus, yet so far as I -may dare to express an opinion upon a matter so recondite, not to say -mysterious, I should rather be inclined to say that the surest route is -by way of her ear, and I am fortified in my belief by an authority as -erudite in these matters as Meredith himself, Shakespeare to wit: - - “That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man - If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.” - -John Wilkes, they say, to all appearance a “most uninteresting-looking -man,” asked for only half an hour of a start to beat the handsomest -gentleman in England at the game of games. Women forgot what he was like -as soon as he began to talk. - -Who has not seen women turning sidelong glances, with that surreptitious -intentness we all know so well, towards some very ordinary man in whose -voice they, but not we, detect the indefinable something that has the -power of luring these shy creatures from their inaccessible retreats? -What man has not seen this play and puzzled over it? The quality—is it -perhaps something caressing, or something brutal and ultra-masculine, or -both at once? Who knows what it is that their intuition perceives? - -So we ask, we less favoured mortals, as we turn and look at him also, -hard and long, only to give it up with a shrug! - - -When I am one of a crowd under the spell of an orator—a rare bird, by -the way, in England—I feel his power less in what he says than in how he -says it. Gladstone, for example, swayed his audience by the fervour of -his personality, not by any beauty of word or thought in his rhetoric. -How meaningless his speeches seem to us nowadays as we vainly try to -read them, how involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid. How dull! And -yet we know that these same involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid and -dull speeches could and did rouse hard-bitten Scotsmen to a wildness of -enthusiasm that seems to us incredible. - - -Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of sound. -But is that all? Is there not something more, something imperceptible -which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions and passions? Is -there an olfactory aura? - - “Why does the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church bring - such an assurance of peace to the congregation?” writes a friend of - mine. “This remarkable sensation I have myself frequently - experienced and wondered at. Yet I am, as you know, a Scots - Presbyterian, and do not credit for a single moment the miraculous - change of bread and wine. And yet to this gracious and comforting - influence I have been subject on more than one occasion. It is for - all the world as if the constant pin-pricks of our normal life were - suspended for a moment or two. - - “It is present only during service, and then only at the culmination - of the rite. - - “As I do not believe in the miracle, the influence must come to me - from without, not from within myself. Indeed, I have actually come - to the conclusion that it is borne in upon me not by the church - atmosphere with its incense, nor by the solemn intonation of the - priest, nor by the whisper of the muted organ, nor yet by the - distant murmur of the choir, but—by the congregation itself! - - “It is from the kneeling worshippers that the mysterious influence - emanates, invisibly, inaudibly, intangibly, to suffuse with the - peace of some other world the spirit even of an unbeliever....” - -Is it possible that influences such as these may enter by the olfactory -door? - -This perhaps may seem to be rather a fanciful suggestion for a -scientifically trained writer to offer. But it is not wholly fanciful, -since it has some support at least from theory (whatever that may be -worth), and even from some considerations based upon solid fact. - -As to theory, we have already seen how Fabre arrived at the conclusion -that the olfactory sense of certain insects is capable of receiving -stimuli to which we are insensitive, stimuli which he surmised to be of -the nature of an ethereal vibration. Consider too the following facts. - -It is well known that there are people who have an instinctive dislike -of cats. The late Lord Roberts was one, and it is said of him that he -was aware of the presence of his _bête noire_ before he caught sight of -it. How was he made aware? - -The same instinctive aversion is felt by some people towards spiders. I -myself know of one, a young girl, who cannot sleep if her bedroom -contains one of these creatures. She, like Lord Roberts feels without -knowing how when a spider is near her. - -Here also is a letter to a newspaper from a correspondent telling the -same tale: - - “SIR, - - “I notice with interest that the official photographer who is to - accompany Sir Ernest Shackleton’s _Quest_ expedition has an intense - dislike of spiders. Can any of your readers explain this uncanny - horror, which I believe is shared by a large number of people? - - “I myself loathe and fear spiders—so much so that I have been known - on more than one occasion to go into a darkened room and to declare - the presence of one of these creatures, my pet abomination being - subsequently discovered.... - - “F. E.” - - -What sense-organ—because there must be one—enables F. E. and others like -him (or her) to detect the presence of a small creepy-crawly? - -We turn now to a series of medical cases which may throw some light upon -this peculiarity. - -There are people who suffer from asthma when they go near horses. To -enter a stable or to sit behind a horse is to them a certain means of -bringing on an attack. - -This susceptibility and the peculiar form taken by the reaction remind -us of hay fever. In sufferers from this troublesome complaint the pollen -of certain plants has an irritating effect upon the mucous surfaces of -the eyes, nose, and bronchial tubes. So in like manner recent -investigation has shown that there is in the blood of the horse a -proteid substance which acts as an irritant poison to those susceptible -people. Their asthma, therefore, is merely a manifestation of the -irritation produced by the poisonous body or its emanation when it is -borne to them through the air. Similarly we are justified in arguing -that cats and spiders may throw off an effluvium which is irritating to -those susceptible to it. - -But it is to be noted that the antipathy in these last instances -manifests itself, not in a tissue change, but in a feeling of the mind, -an emotion. Nay more, these people do not smell the cat or the spider, -except in the way that James I. “smelled” gunpowder. Nevertheless, the -irritant must travel through the air as an odour does, and it probably -enters the organism by the mucous membrane of the nose. - -But does it act upon the olfactory cells? Here we encounter, I must -confess, a serious obstacle to an acceptance of this theory. - -The interior of the nose is sensitive not only to odours, but also to -certain chemical irritants. Any one who has peeled a raw onion or has -taken a good sniff at a bottle of strong smelling-salts knows what I -mean. Now, the chemical irritant, in the latter case ammonia gas, -affects not the olfactory nerve, but certain naked nerve fibrils in the -mucous membrane belonging to what is known as the fifth cranial nerve, a -nerve of simple sensation.[2] And the simultaneous irritation of the -eyelids, and in the case of the pollen and horse effluvia the bronchial -tubes, shows that these resemble in their action the simple chemical -irritants, and not the odours. - -Footnote 2: - - The difference between those two sensations becomes clearly evident - when an anosmic person is peeling an onion. The usual irritation of - the eyes and nose is felt and manifested, but the patient is unaware - of any odour. - -It must be remembered, however, that, as we have said, the cat and the -spider effluvia induce an emotional effect simply, without local -irritation. And emotional change not only follows, it may also precede, -the perception of an odour. - -The following anecdote of Goethe, for example, shows how smell may -affect the personality before it is recognised as an odour by the -consciousness: - - “An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison,” - Goethe said to Eckermann. “I called on him one day, and as I did not - find him at home, I seated myself at his writing-table to note down - various matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a strange - indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased, until at - last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I - should ascribe this wretched, and to me unusual, state, until I - discovered that a dreadful odour issued from a drawer near me. When - I opened it I found, to my astonishment, that it was full of rotten - apples. I immediately went to the window, and inhaled the fresh air, - by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and - told me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, - because the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live - without it.” - -I wish to emphasise, for the sake of my argument, that Goethe underwent -a profound constitutional disturbance, with its attendant discomfort, -before he realised that its cause was an odour. - -If, then, an odour can induce such emotional changes without attracting -attention to itself, the suggestion is not, after all, so very -far-fetched that an emanation proceeding from the worshippers at the -moment of the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church may be -transmitted to the bystanders through the olfactory door to induce in -them an emotion similar to that felt by the initiated. - -It may be objected that Goethe’s experience and that of my friend are -not alike, since Goethe plainly, though tardily, became aware of a real -odour. It must be remembered, however, that Goethe was a scientist and -naturally gifted, besides, with an unusual power of introspective -analysis. He found the cause of his disturbance because he sought for -it. - -Moreover, we learn from Havelock Ellis that during religious excitement -a real (and pleasant) odour is sometimes perceptible in the atmosphere -around the faithful. - -May it not also be the same kind of influence, transmitted in the same -way, that dominates the mind, in company with impressions received by -sight and hearing, when we are in the vicinity of other people? - - -Our study of smells has brought us, to be sure, into a strange region of -psychology, for it is possible that we have here one explanation of the -mysteries of crowd-psychology, of those unreasonable waves of passion -that sometimes sweep through masses of people and lead to all manner of -strange happenings, like crusades and holy wars; _autos-da-fé_; -witch-burnings; lynch-murders; State-prohibition; spiritualistic -manifestations; and other miracles. - - -(The somewhat uncanny “sense” we have when some one else is present in -what we suppose to be an empty room may be olfactory in origin, but it -has generally seemed to me that it is due rather to an alteration in the -echo of the room, a change in its normal sound-picture. If the room is a -strange one to us, I do not think we so readily become suspicious of the -presence of an unseen and unexpected visitor.) - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - THEORIES OF OLFACTION - (_The Pièce de Résistance_) - - -The anatomical structure of the olfactory end-organ in the nose is, as -we saw in Chapter II., simple. - -Contrast it with the eye. Here we have what is obviously an optical -instrument, with lens, iris diaphragm, dark walls, and sensitive plate -complete—a photographic camera, in a word. - -Contrast it also with the ear, which is an acoustic apparatus reminding -us in its detail of a recording gramophone leading to a closed box in -which are what look like a series of resonators, like the wires of a -piano. - -In the antechamber of each of those organs the physical vibrations to -which they respond undergo considerable modification before they reach -the sensory cells. - -In the antechamber of the olfactory organ, on the other hand, the amount -of modification necessary is evidently but slight, as the olfactory -region of the nasal chamber is merely a narrow, open passage. As far as -we know, all that takes place is that the incoming stimulus, the odorous -molecule, is warmed and received by the nasal mucus. - -Thus the very complexity of the structure both of the eye and of the ear -helps us to comprehend their function. - -But what can we deduce from a flat surface in which all we can see is a -collection of cells with minute protoplasmic hairs projecting from their -distal ends? Obviously, little or nothing. We are, in fact, confounded -by simplicity. It may be that we are here dealing with one of the -essential properties of all living matter, little, if at all, altered -from its primitive condition. - -To the physiologist, then, olfaction is the most mysterious of all the -senses. It still retains its secrets, and therein lies the fascination -of its study. - -Of late years, the exploration of this dark region of physiology has -been, and is still being, vigorously pushed, and we shall now proceed to -give what, however, can only be a brief and superficial account of the -progress made and of the opinions held. Even so we shall be compelled to -make an incursion into the high and dry realms of modern chemical and -physical theory. That may not be good hearing, but what is still worse -is that almost every single point we shall be discussing is a matter of -controversy. - -Let us commence with a few of the details, mostly unimportant, upon -which there is general agreement. - -Consider, first of all, the variety, the almost infinite variety, of -odours. We have, for example, all the odours of the world of Nature, the -emanations of inorganic matter, of the earth itself, its soil and its -minerals; to these we must add the multitudinous perfumes of the -vegetable kingdom, of barks, roots, leaves, flowers and fruits, -including those of growing herbaceous plants, which differ so widely -from one another that it is said of Rousseau, whose myopia was -compensated for by an unusually acute sense of smell, and who was, -moreover, no mean botanist, that he could have classified the plants -according to their smell had there been a sufficiency of olfactory terms -for the purpose; then we have the thousand effluvia, some pleasant and -others not so pleasant, of living animals, including the various races -of mankind; next come the—mostly repulsive—odours of decaying vegetable -and putrefying animal matter; and finally the products of man’s own -proud ingenuity and skill, such as the artificial perfumes and flavours -on the one hand and on the other coal-gas, acetylene, carbon disulphide, -and the like. - - -Parker notes it as worthy of remark that man has created, both -accidentally and intentionally, many new odours—smells, that is to say, -which have no fellow in the world of Nature—and he emphasises the fact -that the nose is nevertheless capable of appreciating such novel -sensations. - -In this connection we may mention that the art of modern perfumery can -imitate closely many of the natural perfumes, and more particularly the -natural flavours, by mixing together essences, or components, which in -no way resemble the final product. - -Thus the flavour of peaches can be compounded artificially of aldehyde, -acetate, formate, butyrate, valerianate, œnanthylate, and sebate of -ethyl, and salicylate of methyl, with glycerine, glycerine being added -to the fruit essences, as it is to wines, in order to restrain the -evaporation of the volatile bodies. (The fruit essences are used only in -the making of flavours. They cannot be employed as perfumes, as they are -too irritating to the nose.) - -The union of components to form a product different from any one of them -is found also in vision. When the colours of the spectrum, for example, -are commingled, the resultant white light is devoid of any colour. - -Thus the potential responsiveness of the olfactory organ seems to be -practically inexhaustible. So far, at all events, it has not yet reached -the limits of its capacity. - -The number and variety of recognised smells being so great, then, one -can readily understand how difficult it is to construct a classification -of odours. Many attempts have, in fact, been made, but, depending as -they do more or less upon subjective sensation, no two classifiers give -us the same classification. Indeed, a division of all smells into -“nice,” “neutral,” and “nasty” would be about as good as many much more -ambitious efforts. - -Zwaardemaker’s is the classification most usually followed at present, -and as it is to him we owe most of our knowledge of scientific -olfaction, we shall detail it here: - -(1) Ethereal or fruity odours; (2) aromatic, including as sub-classes -camphrous, herbaceous, anisic and thymic, citronous, and the bitter -almond group; (3) balsamic, with sub-groups floral, liliaceous, and -vanillar; (4) ambrosial or muscous; (5) garlicky (including garlic), -oniony, fishy, and the bromine type of odour; (6) empyreumatic -(guaiacol); (7) caprylic (valerianic acid); (8) disgusting; and (9) -nauseating. - -The subjective character of these classes is obvious, especially in the -last two groups, but, apart from that objection, most people will be -inclined to protest when they learn that chloroform and iodoform are put -into the first, the ethereal or fruity, group, while it is suggested, -though to be sure with a query, that coffee, bread, and burnt sugar may -belong to the “repulsive” (pyridine) group! - -The fact is that Zwaardemaker’s classification is based upon a chemical -foundation, that is to say, upon properties which, as we shall see later -on, do not necessarily correspond with the odours as we smell them. -That, no doubt, explains his inclusion of iodoform among the “fruity” -odours.—Iodoform fruity!—Shades of George Saintsbury and his “Cellar -Book”! - -A shorter classification is that of Heyninx, who, aiming at objectivity, -bases his arrangement, to some extent at all events, upon the spectrum -analysis of odorous molecules in the atmospheric medium, of which more -anon. His list is: acrid, rotten, fœtid, burning, spicy, vanillar or -ethereal, and garlicky. But here, also, the coupling of vanillar with -ethereal odours seems a little inappropriate. - -We stand, perhaps, on rather firmer ground when we turn to the -manufacturer’s classification, founded as it is frankly upon subjective -sensation, and therefore devoid of any surprises to the logical faculty. -Here is Rimmel’s arrangement: rose, jasmine, orange, tuberose, violet, -balsam, spice, clove, camphor, sandal-wood, lemon, lavender, mint, -anise, almond, musk, ambergris, fruit (pear). - -It may be objected, perhaps, that this is a catalogue merely, not a -scientific classification. That is quite true. But what is also true is -that the others we have quoted are little, if any, better. The fact is -that we do not yet possess the knowledge necessary to enable us to -arrange odours in classes. - -The manufacturers, of course, concern themselves with agreeable and -attractive odours only. To the great and growing company of the stinks -they pay no attention whatever. For that reason their contribution to -our knowledge is necessarily but partial and limited. - -In their own proper domain, however, they can point to several great -successes. They recognise, for practical purposes, about eighty -primitive scents. Many natural (to say nothing of many unnatural) -perfumes can now be prepared artificially, and some so prepared are said -to be even more powerful than the natural productions. Artificial musk, -for example, is one thousand times stronger than natural musk, Parker -tells us. Deite, on the other hand, says that the smell of artificial -musk is not equal to that of the natural! Indeed, according to this -authority, although synthetic perfumes play an important part in the -concocting of scents, there are only a few of them which can be used -instead of the natural product. What happens is that the artificial and -the natural are generally used in combination. Thus the “mignonette” of -the shops is prepared by passing geraniol, an artificial odorivector -made from citronella oil, over the natural mignonette flowers, the -resulting product being an essence smelling strongly of mignonette, and -not at all of geraniol. - -One or two, as we said, are purely artificial imitations; coumarin, for -example, the “new-mown hay” of sentimental memory, which used to be -obtained from the tonka bean, is now entirely made up by the synthetic -chemist. But for all the more subtle essences we have still to rely upon -Nature’s laboratory. The manufacturer steps in and distils the precious -essential oil certainly, but it is from flowers that he obtains it. -Attar of roses, for instance, contains, in addition to natural geraniol, -a number of other ingredients which have so far escaped analysis, a -hundred thousand roses supplying only an ounce of it. In like manner a -ton of orange blossom yields but thirty to forty ounces of the odorous -essential oil. - -Many of the costly plant perfumes come from tropical or semi-tropical -countries, such as Ceylon, Mexico, and Peru. But tropical perfumes, -though strong, lack the delicacy of those found in temperate climates. -Cannes, on the Riviera, gives us roses, acacias, jasmine and neroli; -from Nimes come thyme, rosemary, and lavender oil; from Nizza, on the -Italian Riviera, we get violets; from Sicily, oranges and lemons; from -Italy, iris and bergamot. English lavender, until quite recently the -most highly esteemed, came from the towns of Hitchin and Mitcham. But I -am informed that the growing of lavender in England is no longer pursued -with the same success as formerly, and we have to regret the -disappearance of this old and truly English industry. - -The natural musk, curiously enough, which comes from the musk-deer of -Tibet, is not used in making musk perfume. It is, however, widely -employed in the perfumer’s art, as it has the curious property of -enhancing the strength of other perfumes and of rendering them -permanent. Civet, also an animal product, being “the very uncleanly -flux” of the civet cat, has similar properties. It is added to other -perfumes to strengthen them (“to set them off,” as it were) and to -render them more stable. - -But the most curious, and also one of the most ancient of perfumes is -ambergris, which is a fatty, wax-like substance found floating in the -sea or washed ashore. It comes from places as far apart as the west -coast of Ireland, China, and South America. The origin of this substance -was for long a mystery. But we know now that it consists of the -undigested remnants of cephalopods (squids and octopuses) swallowed by -the spermaceti whale. Ambergris is used, like musk and civet, to render -other scents durable. - -But while the victory of the chemist is by no means so complete as it is -in the matter of the dyestuffs, research is steadily going on, and the -next few years will almost certainly witness an evergrowing conquest -over this department of natural chemistry. - -In the meantime chemists are applying themselves to the creation of new -varieties of perfume, and, if we may judge from those disseminated by -certain ladies in public places, with a success that startles and even -irritates us. Compared with them, the love-philtres of olden days must -have been but feeble things. - -“How d’you know you’re in the right ’bus?” asked the ’bus conductor of -the blind man who was confidently boarding his vehicle. - -“This is the Maida Vale ’bus,” was the contemptuous reply. “I knows it -by the smell o’ musk.” - - -The inexhaustible capacity of the olfactory organ, to which we alluded -above, is by no means its only marvel. It is also of the most wonderful -delicacy, equalling, even if it does not surpass, in this respect, the -sensitiveness of the eye to light. - -This property of the smell-organ has been scientifically estimated. -There are many ways of doing so, that by means of Zwaardemaker’s -olfactometer being perhaps the most popular: - - “This consists of two tubes that slide one within the other, and so - shaped that one end of the inner tube may be applied to the nostril. - The odorous material is carried on the inner surface of the outer - tube. When the inner tube, which is graduated, is slipped into the - outer one so as to cover completely its inner face, and air is drawn - into the nostril through the tube, the odorous surface, being - covered, gives out no particles, and no odour is perceived. By - adjusting the inner tube in relation to the outer one, whereby more - or less of the odorous surface is exposed, a point can be found - where minimum stimulation occurs. The amount of odorous substance - delivered under these circumstances to the air current has been - designated by Zwaardemaker as an olfactie, the unit of olfactory - stimulation. Having determined for a given substance the area - necessary for the delivery of one olfactie, doubling that surface by - an appropriate movement of the inner tube will produce a stimulus of - two olfacties, and so forth. Thus a graded series of measured - olfactory stimuli can easily be obtained. Further, by using outer - tubes carrying different odorous substances various comparisons can - be instituted as measured in olfacties” (Parker). - -Instruments more elaborate and of greater accuracy have, as a matter of -fact, been devised and used, but they need not detain us. - -The results obtained by these and other methods of determining the -minimum stimulus of olfaction are certainly astonishing, and reveal as -nothing else can the delicate acuteness of the sense. - -Fischer and Penzoldt found that they could plainly smell one milligram -of chlorphenol evaporated in a room of 230 cubic metres capacity. This -is equivalent to 1/230,000,000 of a milligram to each cubic centimetre -of air, or, assuming 50 cubic centimetres of air as the minimum needed -for olfaction, the amount of chlorphenol capable of exciting sensation -is 1/4,600,000 of the thousandth part of a gram—approximately -1/276,000,000 of a grain! - -Many other odours have been similarly tested, and although there is much -numerical discrepancy in the records made by different observers, all -agree as to the extreme delicacy of the sense. (For vanillin and -mercaptan, see p. 39.) - -Those experiments and estimations explain how it comes about that many -odours (musk, for example) may go on giving off their scent until they -part with the whole of it _without undergoing any appreciable loss of -weight_. - -Thus there is no chemical test known to us so delicate as olfaction. - -It has been found, for example, that over-assiduous efforts at filtering -and purifying the air used for ventilation so as to remove all noxious -chemical and bacterial ingredients defeat their own end. Such air, -although to our artificial tests absolutely clean and pure, seems to the -sense of smell to lack freshness. And the nose is right. The tests are -wrong. For sojourn in such an atmosphere induces lassitude and torpor of -mind, as members of the Houses of Parliament, where this method has been -tried, know to their cost—and ours. - -But albeit so highly sensitive to minute traces, the sense occasionally -fails to perceive a highly concentrated odour. - -For example, every one is aware that a bunch of violets which is filling -a room with its fragrance seems when held to the nose to have no smell -at all, or at the most to have but a vague, indefinable sort of odour. - -The effect, as a matter of fact, varies with the perfume employed. Some, -like violets, have no smell at all. Others give a different smell when -concentrated from what they give when dilute. Muskone, for one, the -essential constituent of musk, has an odour of pines when concentrated; -and storax, a delightful perfume when dilute, is disagreeable when too -powerful, and so on. - -It is to be noted that the disagreeable character of these last is not -due to the mental “cloying” or “sickening” of excessive sweetness; it is -a definite odour. Nor is the anosmia for concentrated violets due to the -exhaustion of the sense. - -Heyninx, comparing, as we shall see, olfaction with vision, believes the -indefinite odour of concentrated violets to be akin to the absence of -colour in white light. But this explanation seems to me to be -improbable, since the effect is due not to the combination of a number -of odours, as white light is the combination of all the colours of the -spectrum, but to the overpowering influence of a single odour. - -Indeed, none of the other senses shows the same phenomenon. If we happen -to catch a momentary glimpse of the noonday sun, we plainly see a disc -of intense light (it is pale blue in colour to my eye), surrounded by a -fiery halo, before it blinds us. In the same way, when a gun is fired -close to the ear, we hear the sound before we are deafened by it. - -It is for such reasons that perfumers never sniff at a bottle of scent; -they take a little, rub it on the back of the hand, and then wait until -the spirit has evaporated before they proceed to smell it. - - -The exquisite delicacy of the sense might lead us to suppose that the -olfactory organ must be quick at responding to its proper stimulus. But -such is not the case. It is, on the other hand, relatively “slow in the -uptake.” - -Gleg has estimated that the reaction time for auditory sensation is from -0·12 to 0·15 of a second, whereas the reaction time for smell is as much -as 0·5 of a second, only one sensory stimulus being slower, that of -pain, namely, which occupies 0·9 of a second. - - -Odours are conveyed to the olfactory end-organ in the air we breathe. -Before they can rise into the air from the odorivector (the odorous -body) and be transported they must, it is clear, pass into the vaporous -or gaseous state. (In the case of fish, of course, the odour must -undergo solution, that is pass into the liquid state.) Many of the -natural properties manifested by smells have been related to this -transformation into vapour. - -Everybody knows how rich garden scents become after a shower. It has -been claimed that this results from the lightening of the atmosphere by -the storm, in consequence of which the diffusion of odorous vapours, -following the law that governs the diffusibility of gases, is -facilitated. But some of the effect must be due, one would think, partly -to the impact of the raindrops breaking up and dispersing the halo of -perfumed air that surrounds each flower, and partly also to the -evaporation of the rain-water that has absorbed these floral emanations. - -We are told also that during the night and in the chill of early morning -the air is less charged with odours because cold checks the diffusion of -gases. This may be true enough for some odours, but I am inclined to -think that the fact is not stated with perfect accuracy, as there are -certain perfumes, that of the tobacco-plant for one and that of the -night-scented stock for another, which are most prevalent after -nightfall. And it has always seemed to me that Mother Earth is never so -nicely perfumed as on a cool September morning, although I should never -be inclined to call any morning “incense-breathing,” like Gray, for -anything less like incense could scarcely be imagined. - -There is no doubt, however, that frost seals up all odorivectors and -renders the air quite odourless. - -A physical law appertaining to gases is also invoked to explain the -“clinging” of odours. Many, if not all, solids and liquids when exposed -to air and other gases adsorb (cause to adhere) to their surfaces a -thin, dense layer or film of the gas. If now that gas happens to contain -an odour, or is itself odorous, the odour must also be adsorbed, and so -in the case of porous materials, such as fabrics, permeated by the -odour, it lingers tenaciously in their depths. - -Odorous bodies in the solid or powdered form are known to retain their -perfume for prolonged periods. Look how long a sandal-wood box remains -aromatic. This property is supposed to depend upon the lowered vapour -tension of the odorous molecules in the depths of the solid or powder, -in virtue of which they rise into the air, or evaporate, but slowly. - -It would seem to be natural to suppose that, as vaporisation plays such -an important part in the dissemination of odours, the volatile bodies -and liquids would be more odorous than the nonvolatile. But, as -Zwaardemaker has pointed out, this is by no means always the case. Many -substances of low volatility are nevertheless highly odorous, and _vice -versâ_. - - -We turn now for a moment to consider the behaviour of the odorous vapour -in the nose. - -As it passes through the nose the current of inspired air sweeps along -the lower and middle regions only; the upper or olfactory region is not -directly traversed. But almost certainly some of the air is diverted up -into the olfactory region in light eddies, and the act of sniffing, -which is a short inspiration abruptly begun and ended, and which we -instinctively resort to when trying to detect a faint odour, is -obviously of a nature to propel side-streams or eddies up into the -olfactory zone. One is reminded of the production of smoke rings from a -box. - -We smell not only during inspiration, however, but also during -expiration, the latter conveying to the olfactory region the flavours of -food and drink. - -Flavours, that is to say the olfactory elements of so-called “taste,” -are not appreciated to the full until after deglutition. To most of us, -although experts and connoisseurs can determine it by smelling the wine -in the glass, the bouquet of port has really no meaning until after it -is drunk, simply because the expiratory current of air as it ascends -through the throat into the nose receives the concentrated vapours of -the warmed volatile higher alcohols which are clinging about the fauces. - -We may here remark that although we are usually able to perceive that -the odour and the flavour of a sapid food or drink are akin to each -other, the sensation of the odour anticipating that of the flavour, yet -they are by no means always identical. They may strike us as do a plain -and a coloured version of the same print. Sometimes the flavour seems to -be the more powerful, sometimes the odour. Nearly all bouillons, for -example, possess a flavour more rich and full than the odour they give -off with their steam. On the other hand, valerian has a strong, -objectionable smell, which, strange to say, becomes subdued and -relatively tolerable when that medicine is being swallowed. - - -It is a curious fact, well known to expert “tasters,” that if the eyes -are kept closed during the test, the delicacy of appreciation of -flavours, and also of the smell of the wine in the glass, is entirely -lost. I cannot suggest any explanation for this curious phenomenon. - - -Anosmia, absence of smell, which is the next topic for our -consideration, is a not uncommon defect. It is generally the result of -some form of nasal obstruction, such as a bad “cold in the head,” as -Æsop’s fox was clever enough to remember. This type is temporary and -remediable. But there are other forms that are due to nerve-disease, and -for these nothing can be done. - -A congenital anosmia is occasionally met with, and a curious partial -anosmia, reminding us of colour-blindness or tone-deafness. I myself -know people who cannot smell coal-gas unless it is very strong, and I -once knew a cook,—a cook who couldn’t smell a bad egg! - -Albinos are said to be congenitally anosmic, and there was recorded many -years ago by Hutchison the case of a negro who, gradually losing all his -pigment, became anosmic in consequence (cited by Ogle). As the -sustentacular cells of the olfactory area contain granules of pigment -(see Chapter II.), we are forced to conclude that it must exercise a -highly important function in the perception of odours. We shall see -later on that its presence is supposed by some to support the theory -that odour is a specific ethereal vibration similar to light. - - -We turn now to discuss the real nature of odour, a section of our -subject which is still theoretical and highly problematical. - - -Having accomplished so much in the art of perfumery, the chemist ought, -one would think, to be able to tell us whether or not there is any -relationship or correspondence between odour and chemical constitution. - -When investigation of this point was begun, a hopeful fact came to -light, as it was pointed out that certain bodies of similar chemical -composition had all the same kind of smell. These were the compounds of -arsenic, bismuth, and phosphorus, all of which smell of garlic. But it -was soon realised that this fact was of little or no significance, as -the oxides of many of the metals, although quite different from the -former group, also smell of garlic. To these we may add the instance of -water and sulphuretted hydrogen, two substances which are related -chemically, as their formulæ show (H_{2}O and H_{2}S), and yet one of -them is odourless, While the other has a strong, unpleasant smell. -Finally, according to Deite, natural and artificial musk have nothing in -common but their smell. Chemically they are quite different. - -The property of odour, then, does not depend upon the Chemical -constitution of bodies. - -The next question that arises is: Do bodies exhaling the same kind of -odour resemble each other in the structure of their molecules? In other -words, can odour be related to molecular structure? - -To the chemist all matter is made up of atoms and molecules. The -elements, bodies which cannot be broken up by chemical action into any -simpler form, are composed of atoms. On the other hand, when elements -combine to form a compound, the unit of the new body, composed as it is -of two or more atoms of different elements linked together, is known as -a molecule. (Probably the elements also exist in the molecular state, -the atoms of which they are composed being linked together in groups.) -Both atoms and molecules are, of course, very minute in size. - - -For reasons we need not enter into here, the molecule is held to have a -certain structural form, which form is indicated by what is known as a -graphic formula. The graphic formula of water, one of the simplest, may -be written as H—O—H, and we may regard it as having a linear form. -(Modern views indicate that it is not a simple line, but in two planes.) - -Many molecules, however, particularly those of the organic compounds, -are highly complex, and their structural form must be very different -from that of water. - -The question, then, now before us is: Does odour bear any relationship -to the molecular structure of bodies? And again it has been maintained -that a clue to the problem of the real nature of odour lies here. - -There is a well-known series of chemical bodies known as the -“aromatics,” by reason of the fact that they possess strong smells more -or less similar in quality. With regard to this series, which is made up -of groups of what are known as radicles which occupy definite positions -on a molecule shaped like a ring—the benzene ring, as it is -called—Henning, a German observer, has expressed the opinion that the -odour depends, not upon the radicles as such, but upon the position they -occupy on the ring. - -Transferring his argument to odorous bodies in general, and taking six -groups as embracing all (spicy, flowery, fruity, resinous, burnt, and -foul), he associates each of these types with some feature in the -constitution of the molecule which is common to all the members of each -group. - -To enter more fully into this branch of the subject would carry us too -deeply into chemistry. I shall content myself therefore with saying that -Henning’s views have received considerable support from scientific -chemists and have led to several interesting and suggestive -developments. - - -Heyninx, however, criticising this theory, points out that hydrocyanic -(or prussic) acid and nitrobenzol, two substances with the same smell, -have each a molecular structure in no way resembling the other. - -The graphic formulæ of these bodies, which I give here, plainly show the -difference between them: - -H—C≡N (hydrocyanic acid) and - - H - C - HC C—NO_{2} - | || - HC CH (nitrobenzol). - \ / - C - H - -(T. H. Fairbrother, to whom I am indebted for much information on the -chemistry of olfaction, would dispose of this criticism of Hcyninx’s by -denying that the odours of those two substances are identical. See -later, p. 132.) - - -Chemistry, then, having, according to the critics, failed us, we turn to -the allied science of physics. Physics deals with matter in its ultimate -state, beginning, so to speak, where chemistry, with its work of changes -and combinations, ceases, and taking us deep into the heart of matter -independent of its chemical properties and behaviour. - -We have seen that, chemically speaking, elements and their compounds -exist as molecules made up of atoms. Now molecules may be minute, and -atoms even more minute, but in “electrons,” the name given to the last -divisible particle of matter known to the physicist, we are dealing with -minuteness inconceivable. Sir Oliver Lodge has said that if an atom -could be expanded to fill a space equal to that of the entire solar -system, the electrons composing it would each be the size of an orange! -There is supposed, indeed, to be an atomic “system” composed of a -central nucleus like the sun, with electrons revolving round it, the -nucleus having a positive, and the revolving particles a negative, -electric charge. Further (whether in virtue of these moving electrons or -otherwise is not quite clear), the molecule is supposed to be in a state -of constant vibration. - -The physical theory of odour, then, refers that quality to the vibration -of the molecule. It suggests that the molecules of an odorous body -passing in the gaseous or, in fishes, the liquid state into the -olfactory region of the nose, are there received by the film of mucus in -which the olfactory hairs lie, and stimulate these hairs by their -molecular vibration. No chemical change is supposed to take place, only, -as it were, a mechanical stimulation, comparable to the mechanical -stimulation of the retina by the waves of light. - -A recent development of the theory which we owe to Heyninx, a Belgian -scientist, brings the process very closely into harmony with what occurs -in the eye. According to this authority, olfaction is in reality a -perception of ethereal undulations of the same character as the -undulations of light, these undulations being provoked by the -intra-molecular vibrations of the odorous vapour in the nasal mucus and -transmitted to the olfactory hairs not by immediate contact, but through -the medium of the ether. - -We owe this last suggestion to the curious fact, but recently -discovered, that many odorous substances (in their gaseous form in the -air) absorb the rays of ultra-violet light. - -In order to make clear what this means, we must say a preliminary word -regarding the spectrum and spectrum analysis. - -The passage of a beam of white light through a glass prism breaks it up -into its component parts, beginning with red, then orange, yellow, -green, blue, and ending with violet. Beyond the violet end of the -spectrum we know there are rays invisible to us, but capable of acting -on a photographic plate. These are called the ultra-violet rays. - -In like manner, beyond the red end of the spectrum we know there are -also rays, likewise invisible to us, but perceptible by our tactile -sense as heat. These are called the infra-red rays. - -Now, the rate of vibration of all these different rays, visible and -invisible, has been estimated, and they increase in frequency from the -infra-red, which are the slowest, to the ultra-violet, which are the -most rapid. - -As we have already said, it has recently been shown that the odorous -vapours absorb certain ultra-violet rays. That is to say, when the beam -of light is directed through a chamber containing the odorous vapour -before entering the prism, what are known as absorption-bands—vertical -black lines in the white—appear in the photograph of the spectrum. - -Similar lines are seen, as a matter of fact, in the visible spectrum of -sunlight, and as these correspond in position with the spectrum given by -chemical elements in an incandescent gaseous state, it is supposed that -they are produced by the absorption of the corresponding light-rays by -these gases in the solar atmosphere. - -The physical explanation given of this phenomenon is that the molecules -of the gas in the sun absorb such light-rays as are equal in rate of -vibration to the rate of their own vibrating molecule. - -In the same way, Heyninx and others argue that the odorous vapour is -composed of molecules which are vibrating with a period equal to that of -the light-rays they absorb. - -Moreover, since the position of the absorption-band in the photograph -varies, lying in some cases nearer to the visible violet and in others -further away from it, and since this position varies with the particular -fundamental odour employed, it is suggested that not only do the -molecules vibrate with a period equal to that of the ultra-violet rays -they absorb, but as this vibration varies in rate, so it is to this -variation that we must ascribe the differences in odours. This is -analogous, of course, to the appreciation of colour by the eye. One -odorous molecule, that is to say, like the colour red, having a slower -rate of vibration, will give rise to one kind of smell; another, like -the colour yellow, with a more rapid rate, will give rise to another -kind of smell, and so on for all the fundamental odours. Heyninx, -indeed, goes so far as to fix the position in the olfactory gamut of all -fundamental odours, and to base upon it the classification we have -already considered. - -It is supposed, that is to say, that the vibrations of the odorous -molecule set up undulations in the ether, and that it is those ethereal -undulations that stimulate the olfactory hairs, just as ethereal -undulations emanating from a luminous source stimulate the retina. - -There is one great difference, however, between light and odour, a -difference admitted, we may mention, by the supporters of the undulatory -theory, but not emphasised by them. The difference is this: in the case -of visible light the ethereal undulations emanate from a source at a -distance (it may be like starlight at an enormous distance) from the -sensory end-organ, whereas in the case of odour the undulation is -supposed to be generated by the odorous molecule in close proximity to -the end-organ. - -The theory makes no attempt to explain how the olfactory hairs respond -to these hypothetical ethereal waves. - - -Finally, we have the question of the olfactory pigment to consider, and -in this matter we cannot do better than follow the exposition of William -Ogle, an English physician who wrote as long ago as 1870. As will be -seen, he forestalls the modern undulatory theory of olfaction in a -remarkable manner. - -Ogle contends that the presence of pigment must be of great importance -in the function for the following reasons: - -First, the epithelium of the olfactory region is pigmented, while that -of the rest of the nasal chamber and sinuses is devoid of colouring -matter. - -Secondly, there seems to be some correspondence between the degree of -pigmentation and the acuteness of smell, as the following facts -suggest:— - -In macrosmatic animals, such as the dog, cat, fox, sheep, and rabbit, -pigmentation extends over a larger space and is darker in tint than in -man. In these animals also the mucus covering the olfactory area of the -nose is itself pigmented. - -We have seen that human albinos are anosmic, and the same is probably -true of animal albinos. But care is necessary in making observations on -suspected albinos in animals, as even when they are altogether white a -certain amount of black pigment remains about the face and nose. - -The following reports, however, would lead us to conclude that as with -man, so with the animals, a relative deficiency of pigment is associated -with a dull olfactory sense. - -It is by smell that the herbivora detect and avoid plants which are -poisonous, and when poisoning does occur, it is usually a white animal -that suffers. In some parts of Virginia the farmers will only rear black -pigs, because, they say, the white ones eat and are poisoned by the -roots of _Lachtanthus tinctoria_. For the same reason in the Tarentino -only black sheep are reared. - -Thirdly, the dark-skinned human races have a keener sense of smell than -the lighter races. - -Fourthly, the sense grows more acute as we get older, as we have already -seen, and nasal pigmentation, it is said, also increases with age. - -As to the function of the olfactory pigment, Ogle remarks first of all -that odours are absorbed more readily by dark than by light materials. - -Pigment is also present in the labyrinth of the ear as well as in the -eye, and its presence in these organs seems to be essential to their -activity. - -It is to be noted that the pigment does not occur on the nerve structure -in any of those end-organs, but external, though contiguous to it. In -the eye, it lies in contact with the rods and cones of the retina; in -the nose, with the olfactory hairs; in the ear, with the terminal bodies -of the auditory nerve. - -Hence the pigment, he supposes, must be associated with the reception of -the sensory impressions. - -In the eye and the ear those impressions are undulatory in character. -That being so, he holds that the undulatory theory of olfaction also is -probably the correct one. - -Ogle finishes with the remark that the theory would be strengthened if -it could be shown that pigment was specially suited for the absorption -and modification of undulations. - -It is interesting to us to learn that claims are now being made that -pigment does possess the power necessitated by Ogle’s theory. At all -events, there is a theory of vision (Castelli’s) which claims for the -ocular pigment the power of absorbing and modifying light waves, and -Heyninx holds that the olfactory pigment possesses a similar property. - - -Summing the whole matter up, then, we may say that the undulatory theory -of olfaction is, that an odorivector gives off in the form of vapour (in -the aerial medium) extremely attenuated portions of its substance, too -minute to be weighed, and that this vapour, disseminated through the -air, enters the nose in respiration, and, being wafted up into the -olfactory region, is received by the mucus bathing the olfactory hairs, -where, in virtue of the ultra-violet radiations which proceed from its -molecules and are modified by the olfactory pigment, it acts on the -hairs, setting up changes (it may be also undulatory in nature) in them -and in their cells, which changes are transmitted thence by the -olfactory nerves to the neurones or nerve-cells of the olfactory bulb -(or lobe) of the brain. - - -The undulatory theory of olfaction, then, as will be evident to the -reader, has a good deal in its favour. And in addition to what we have -already said of it as accounting for the absorption by odorous vapours -of ultra-violet rays, and as giving a hint regarding the function of -pigment in the olfactory area, there are also a number of other -phenomena which it seems to explain. We have seen, for example, how one -odorivector, such as musk or civet, may have the property of enhancing -the power of another, and this is a property which is characteristic -also of certain luminous conditions (fluorescence, lumino-luminescence). - -Again, there is a harmony existing between certain of the manufacturers’ -primitive odours; “they go well together,” and are employed for that -reason in the art of perfumery. This resembles the harmony existing in -another class of undulations, the sound waves. - -On the other hand, just as one sound may silence another by the clashing -of their waves, so one odour may “kill” or neutralise another odour -(iodoform and coffee, _e.g._). - -There are several other minor phenomena which are in agreement with this -theory. They need not detain us. - - -We turn now to the criticism of the undulatory theory of odour. - -First of all, we shall dispose of an objection which, at first sight, -has a very serious aspect. - -It may seem difficult to understand how vibrations which appear to us -when of a certain rate to be light should when they are of another rate -become to us smell. How can one and the same physical condition produce -sensations so different? - -The same difference, however, is encountered when we pass to the rays at -the other end of the spectrum, the reds and infra-reds. On one side of -the dividing line we only perceive these as heat; on the other side they -also become light. - -Obviously, the difference can only be due to the different character of -the sensory end-organ, the receptor of these vibrations. As Head says: -“Each peripheral end-organ is a specific resonator attuned to some -particular kind of physical vibration”—reminding us not only of -soundresonators, but also of wireless receivers, which are “tuned” or -accommodated to particular wave-lengths. - -Thus, if red rays encounter certain tactile end-organs in the skin, they -are perceived by the mind as heat, and if they pass into the eye and -stimulate the retina, they are perceived as red light. In other words, -in whatsoever manner an end-organ is stimulated, it only induces its own -particular sensation. - -How it comes about that the various end-organs induce such different -sensations is not yet known. - - -The ultra-violet theory of olfaction, however, has to run the gauntlet -of much more serious criticism than the difficulty we have just disposed -of. - -One great objection to it (to my mind) is that it fails to account for -another absorption phenomenon of which I have not yet made any mention. -It was first observed by Tyndall nearly fifty years ago. - -On submitting odorous vapours to examination Tyndall found, not that -they absorbed ultra-violet rays, as this method is of quite recent -usage, but that they _absorbed heat-rays_, or the _infra-red rays_ of -the spectrum. So that, if it be correct to say that odours set up -ultra-violet rays in the ether, we must be equally ready to credit them -with setting up infra-red rays also! - -But there is another, and perhaps a stronger, objection to the -ultra-violet theory. - -In the interesting and highly instructive schema drawn up by Heyninx of -the wave-lengths of ultra-violet absorbed by odours, we find one or two -discrepancies of a serious character. - -For example, iodoform and cinnamic aldehyde show absorption-bands -occupying nearly the same position on the spectrum; and presumably, -therefore, these substances have the same molecular vibration-rate. Yet -their odours are not at all alike! - -Again, acetone-methylnonic and butyric acids have _precisely_ the same -absorption bands, and yet they also exhale totally different odours. - -But the most serious discrepancy remains. The absorption bands of -hydrocyanic acid and watery vapour (steam) have precisely the same -position in the spectrum, yet one of these has a highly characteristic -odour, and the other has none at all! - -It is rather difficult, in view of these findings, to believe that this -absorption phenomenon can have anything to do with the quality of odour. - -My friend Mr. T. H. Fairbrother writes regarding this controversy:— - - “Whilst I do not for one moment suggest that the whole phenomena of - smell can be explained entirely in terms of chemical constitution, I - do maintain that it has much to do with it, and I certainly think - that more valuable information about the cause of various odours has - been obtained from considerations of chemical constitution than from - the many extravagant physical theories which do not lead us very - far. In my view the physicists are begging the question, because - they usually postulate something which we cannot prove, and whilst - it is possible that the vibration of electrons causes smell, how - much wiser does that statement make us? One might easily say that it - was possible that the bombardment of electrons caused smell, etc. On - the chemical side, however, we are bound down to experimental facts, - and we do know that esterification of carboxylic acids does bring - about a fruity odour invariably, etc. Chemical constitution cannot - explain fully all these phenomena, because chemical formulæ - themselves are only approximations, but the effect of groups in a - nucleus has done much to help synthetic production of odorous - bodies. When the physicist can control the vibrations of his - electrons and make them rotate in accordance with his will, then he - may be able to synthesise new odours—till then we have no means of - testing his theories.” - - -The older view of olfaction—and many modern scientists, as we see, still -adhere to it—is that the odorous molecule acts as a chemical reagent -upon the olfactory hairs. And there is something to be said for this -opinion. - -To begin with, no one doubts nowadays that odours are material. They -pass through the air as vapours, and they are known to travel miles on -the wind. That is to say, apart from those hypothetical varieties of -odour (if we can call them odour at all) discussed by Fabre earlier in -this book, odours do not emanate from a point and disperse in all -directions as light and sound do. Why then drag in the ether? Is it not -more probable that the odorous molecule acts on the olfactory hairs by -direct material contact, and that it sets up chemical changes in them? - -We are asked to believe that the ultra-violet rays of odour stimulate -the olfactory hairs as visible light-rays stimulate the retina. But it -must not be forgotten that in the eye those rays may induce first of all -chemical changes in the retina, just as they would act on the silver -salt of a photographic plate, and that it may be by these changes that -the retina is stimulated. - -In the phenomenon of olfactory exhaustion, as we said in our first -chapter, we have a circumstance which suggests the presence of some -chemical reagent in the olfactory area. - -It may be, of course, that in the nose as well as in the eye the process -is a combination of chemical and physical changes. And in any case we -are here dealing with that obscure region where chemistry and physics -meet and mingle. - -We have now come to the end of our discourse upon the theories of odour, -and it must be confessed that we are still very much in the dark as to -the nature of the odorous, and as to the manner in which it excites the -olfactory organ to activity. - - -Still more mysterious, however, is the process by which the physical -quality of odour becomes the sensation of the mind we call smell. - -The transmutation of a physical quality into a sensation is indeed the -great mystery of all our senses. Olfaction is not the only one before -which we throw up our hands, and this in spite of the detailed and -voluminous information which modern physiology, neurology, and -psychology place at our disposal, perhaps less in spite of this -information than because of it, seeing that the further our knowledge -extends the wider seems the unknown realm beyond. Our science is an -ever-expanding sphere, no doubt, but it is expanding into the infinite. - -How is it that the rhythmic vibration of matter becomes what we call -“sound,” or the rhythmic vibration of the ether “light”? - -How does the physical pass into and become part of the psychic? - -According to recent teaching, the physical can be followed as such from -the sensory end-organ itself as far as the first synapse, or junction -with the neurone. But there something happens; ... then it reappears in -a new guise, vibration becomes sensation, the physical psychic, the -objective subjective, the real ideal, the dead alive! In that brief -tumble of time what a miraculous transformation! - -Modern science has cleared up much of the mystery of the objective -world, and although it may be far from the end of its search, although, -indeed, the search, one must think, can never entirely elucidate the -dense obscurity that envelops us on every side, dark as a starless night -around a candle, yet we already know this much, that the real world is -very different from the world depicted for us by our senses. - -Only a little imagination is needed to convey us out of the magic circle -into which we have been born, and what a strange universe do we then -find ourselves in! Entangled in a meshwork of space-time and permeated -by whirling maelstroms of varied and innumerable oscillations, we lose -all hold on reality in the very act of grasping it. - -But although we do possess some sort of vague notion as to the -constitution of the outer universe, before the inner we stand ignorant -and speechless. - -Regarded as a machine, the brain, it is true, like the world without, is -reluctantly yielding up its secrets one by one. We are learning how it -works as a chemical factory, as a physical power-house, so that already -we can surmise that here also we have probably to deal with a -multiplicity of vibrations, of exquisitely minute transformations of -energy, of involved intercommunications, of deft though intricate -associations, of rapid yet permanent recordings and registrations. - -We are now able to follow the undulations we term light, not only into -the eye, but into the brain itself, locating their central station in -the occipital lobe, whence their effects radiate all over the organism. -And in the case of olfaction Pawlow has taught us that its chief -vegetative function, the result of radiations from the olfactory central -station in the brain, is the arousing of the digestive glands to -activity. The first act of digestion is olfaction. But the routes which -the olfactory stimuli follow in the central nervous system and their -communications with other sensory paths are not yet known. - -The secrets of the brain which have been disclosed to us, however -wonderful they may be, concern only, we must remember, the machinery of -the nervous system, that part, namely, which is of the same nature and -order as the objective world, of which indeed it is a member. Hitherto -have we come, but no further: - - “The traveller hails. The echoing walls respond. - And there the matter ends. The wilds beyond - Are broken rock and desert where no foot - Can venture on to trace a further route, - For none hath trodden or shall ever tread - This hither limbus of the outer dread. - Cloven abrupt, the absolute abyss - Falls sheer beneath us, fathoms fathomless, - And still high o’er us heaves the unclimbed hill, - And the unanswered questions front us still.” - -The “thought” escapes us. Somewhere beyond the boundary of the physical -flits this elusive, this tantalising ghost. How it is acted upon and how -it reacts we know to some extent. But what the nature of its action may -be is more than we can determine. - -Nay! A moment ago we lightly spoke of passing out of the magic circle -into which we have been born, and we forthwith proceeded to talk as if -we had in reality escaped from this our prison. But there is no escape -for us, of course. No man can jump out of his skin. There undoubtedly -are such things as “waves,” or “undulations,” or “oscillations,” or -“vibrations,” or whatever we like to call them. But they are not what we -imagine them to be. There is, we may suppose, a four-dimensioned -universe of “space-time.” But it is beyond our conception. There is -“objective reality,” in a word. But it is no reality to us. Those very -expressions, glibly used though they be, are but metaphors—“pretendings” -a child would call them—attempts to bring the remote a little nearer to -us, to clothe the uncouth in the garments we ourselves wear; all of -which is nothing but Maya—illusion—shadowplay. - -Let us not deceive ourselves. Along with the recent revelations of -physical science there comes, say certain modern philosophers, the -suspicion that the universe is irrational. At every point we are brought -up short by the unknowable. - -For example, Einstein tells us that what we call the “ether” has no -existence. It is merely a “void.”—But how can we call that void which -contains something—undulations, to wit? - -“Nay!” you argue; “the undulations traverse the ether, but they are not -it. The ether is a non-entity. It has no existence. It is nothing.” - -To which I reply: “But ‘nothing’ is an absolute term. It means ‘no -thing.’ How, then, can undulations, or anything else for that matter, -pass through nothing?” - -“What nonsense!” you cry; “this kind of verbal poser is just the silly -old metaphysicians’ parlour game of playing with words.” - -I know it is. But the word-play has its uses. It demonstrates to us that -words, language, logic, all alike, fail our thought, not so much because -those instruments are limited in power as because the thought itself is -lacking in precision and comprehensiveness. - -It is when our word-play probes the expression that the vagueness of the -idea is made manifest. Our foil, even with the button on, goes clean -through the phantom. - -The mind, in short, has not absorbed, nor can it absorb, the _fact_. We -seize a glass of water to drain it, and presently, like Alice, we find -ourselves swimming about in an ocean! Obviously the universe _is_ beyond -our comprehension, a conclusion desperate if you like, yet undeniable. - -But how very annoying it is, after all our heavy labour, to hear the -ancient scoff of Zophar the Naamathite still ringing triumphant: - -“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty -unto perfection?” - -(Still we mean to go on trying!) - - -Yet of all the senses none surely is so mysterious as that of smell. -For, as we have shown, the nature of the emanations that stir it to -activity is still unknown; the simple structure of its end-organ -confronts us, like a sphinx, with silence; and after the reception of -the stimulus in the olfactory lobe of the brain its further connections -and communications still remain unsurveyed, albeit, as I have already so -amply displayed, its effects upon the _psyche_ are both wide and deep, -at once obvious and subtle. - - - - - CHAPTER IX - DUST OF THE ROSE PETAL - - -By way of relief from the exacting mental strain of the last chapter, I -have thought that the reader who has got this length might be grateful -for something more simple, and so it is not altogether egotism that -leads me to finish up with a few of the olfactory pictures I cherish. - - -Before proceeding with the subject-matter proper of the chapter, -however, let me put in a plea for the conscious cultivation of the sense -of smell. But little more, I take it, is needed in this way than to pay -attention to the olfactory sensations that reach us, for the very fact -of taking note of them is sufficient probably to increase the power and -delicacy of olfaction, this being always the effect of the mental -process known as attention. - -Smell may thus be easily cultivated and improved, and with the increase -in its appreciation of the world comes an enriching of the other -sense-impressions that is quite surprising. - -It is possible that there is no substance in the natural world entirely -devoid of odour. At all events, after a time the amateur in smell may -find himself able, like Rousseau, to perceive perfumes when other people -do not notice any, and as a mark at which he can aim let it be said that -when he finds himself able to distinguish streets from each other by -their smell alone he has made some little progress in the art. - - -The innate acuteness of the sense varies widely in different people. -Some go through life blunt to all but the coarser smells, while others -are gifted with a sensitiveness as delicate almost as that of a -macrosmatic animal. This is scarcely an exaggeration. I am acquainted -with people—English people—who are able to recognise by olfaction not -only different races and the two sexes, but even different persons. One -of those sensitives informs me that to her the personal olfactory -atmosphere is every whit as characteristic and unmistakable as the play -of features or the carriage of the figure. - -Another remarkable feat within the capacity of human macrosmatics, and -one that seems almost incredible to the ordinary individual, is that of -being able to distinguish the clothing of different persons by its -aroma. Some can even recognise their own, a remarkable circumstance in -view of the almost universal rule that each is anosmic to his own -particular atmosphere. - -It is true that we can get on quite well without smelling. Probably -congenital anosmia is the least crippling of all sense-deprivations. But -how much it enters into our enjoyment of life when we have once -possessed it is shown by the blankness that attends its loss; we feel -then as if a tint had been bleached out of the world. - - -At this juncture we may stay a moment to allude to the action of tobacco -on olfaction. There are few people nowadays who would uphold King -Jamie’s “Counterblaste,” wherein he denounces smoking as— - - “a custome loathsome to the Eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to - the Braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume - thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit - that is bottomlesse.” - -But, in fact, regarding the influence of the tobacco-habit on the sense -there is a conflict of opinion. Some say it dulls olfaction; others, it -has no deleterious effect. My own experience would lead me to agree with -the former opinion. - - -We now proceed with our memories. - -Who does not become a boy again when the fragrance of a gardener’s -bonfire fills the air? In my own case when I smell it my eyes begin to -smart and to water, and I hear the laughter and shouts of my brothers -as, daring the wrath of Olympus, we leap over the blaze and land on the -white powdery ash that rises in clouds around us to the ruination of -boots and clothing. It is always evening, “’twixt the gloamin’ and the -mirk.” The moon, still golden, is hung low in the sky; the wind is sharp -with a touch of frost, but the glare and the glow of the embers reddens -and warms us—at least that part of us we turn to the fire. (Have you -ever felt the fierce pleasure of being at once scorched and frozen?) - -In those few country places in Scotland where the old Beltane fires of -midsummer or midwinter are still kindled, children are encouraged to -pass through the smoke, that being good for their health. The custom, -frankly pagan, is probably the maimed rite of a sacrifice of children to -the old gods. That may be quite true, and yet I concur in believing the -practice to be beneficial. At all events, the bonfires of so many years -ago have left with me a memory that has often recurred since, and always -with healing on its wings. - - -Again, the fainter, keener odour of burning pine-wood combined with the -fanning sensation on the face of the cold wind of the dawn always brings -back to me a summer morning at the Swiss frontier station of Pontarlier -after an evening when vin ordinaire had induced effects extraordinaire -upon a youth unaccustomed to that fiery beverage. Those, no doubt, were -the days when nothing mattered much. Nevertheless the fragrant coolness -of that morning after touches my aching brow to this day with the -soothing gentleness of a hand fraught with understanding and -forgiveness. - - -Then what sea-lover is there but responds to the salt pungency of -seaweed on an empty beach? - -It is an interesting fact that the smell of the sea may travel inland -for miles on a favouring breeze. With the south-west wind blowing moist, -I have in the heart of Lanarkshire repeatedly been stirred out of -everyday hebetude by the smell of the sea on the Ayrshire coast, some -thirty miles away. And Réné Bazin (in “Les Oberlé”) says you can even -smell it sometimes in Alsace, 250 miles from the Mediterranean. - -Once, indeed, at King’s Cross, London, I beheld monstrous -railway-stations and muddy streets, with their motor-’buses, dingy -wayfarers, yelling newsboys and all, melting away into the glimmer and -space of the sea in a sort of magical transformation, just as mist -low-lying in Russell Square will turn at times those garish hotels into -sea-girt palaces.... Only this time there was no mist. There was, -indeed, no need of mist. For the spell of power was a sudden whiff of -the sea from far across the bricks, slates, and sooty chimneys. - -But there is another sea-smell, equally powerful and much less romantic. -Can you endure the breath of hot oil and metal from the engines of a -steamer without a qualm? - - -If ever a boy has watched and helped the fishermen clean and tan their -nets, he will always after, as often as chance brings the smell to his -nostrils, revive again the pit in the ground and the gruff voices of the -heavy-booted men pulling the twisted net up and down, in and out. - - -Or the bean-flowers’ boon? - -This, as it happens, concerns also somebody else, but as she has long -since been lost in the crowd, I am not breaking any confidences in -recalling the scene. - -We are standing together beside the gate of a hill plantation, and I see -a tall lady’s delicately cut profile against the sombre green and brown -of the fir-trees. Although the flush of the sunset has almost entirely -faded from the sky, it seems to be lingering yet a while on her cheek as -if reluctant to leave her. As for me, I am as keen to every breath of -emotion as the little loch below is to the slightest stir of air. The -time is past for talk, and I am watching her in silence. So I see the -thin curved nostril dilate a little, at once to be quietly restrained, -as if even this little display of feeling on her part were out of -place,—and then I also turn to look at the butterfly bean-flowers in the -field at our feet. - -Now as often as the bean blooms, so does her memory. - - -How powerfully associations affect our olfactory likes and dislikes we -hinted on a former page, and in this matter of smell-memories we can -observe the same effect. Smells which to others seem offensive may, if -they arouse a pleasant memory, borrow from it a tinge that turns their -offence into a joy for ever. In my own case iodine and the rather -irritating odour of bleaching powder are always welcome and always -sweet. Yet they recall nothing more interesting than the days of -childhood to me! On the other hand, perfumes generally considered to be -pleasant will be objectionable to us if they arouse unhappy memories. - - -The most beautiful, however, are those which have been young with us, -and yet have never forsaken us, by continual refreshment keeping an -eternal youth. And of all the odours in life none surely is so rich both -in retrospect and in prospect as the smell of books to him who loves -them. The cosy invitation of a library! Not a public library, needless -to say, where the intimate appeal is lost in a jumble of smells—dust, -paste, ink and clammy overcoats. Such public mixtures the bookworm, that -solitary self-centred individual, must, by reason of his shyness, ever -consistently shun. But usher him into the private room of a private -house where books, many books, have reposed for many years. Then go away -and leave him to it. - -The smell of a room full of books is slow to form. Like the bouquet of -wine, it must ripen. You have to wait. But if you are able to wait, then -one fine day you will be welcomed there by the snuggest smell in all the -world, which, when once it comes, will for ever remain, like rooks in a -clump of elms. I know a few houses where this most seductive of all -perfumes has resided for untold years, and whence it will never depart -as long as our immemorial England endures. But alas! like most people, I -have only been a fleeting visitor to those nooks of enchantment, and -have had to wait myself not once, but many times, as often indeed as I -have shifted my roof-tree, for that ancient fusty atmosphere. There is, -I fear, no way of hastening the appearance of this beckoning finger to -oblivion. We need not linger over the analysis of this particular odour. -Book-lovers know it. Others don’t care. - -“You are a reader, I see,” said an observant doctor to me once. - -“How d’you know that?” I asked in surprise, as we had just met for the -first time. - -“I know it,” was his reply, “by the caressing way you took up that -book!” - -Your real bookworm loves all books. Like the modern genius, he is -amoral. But unlike the genius, his amorality, simple soul, is confined -within the four walls of a library. He could never, I am sure, bring -himself to agree with André Theuriet, who in “La Chanoinesse” depicts - - “les _Bijoux indiscrets_ auprès des œuvres de Duclos; _Candide_, - _Jacques la Fataliste_ et _le Sophia_ voisinant de _Restif de la - Brétonne_ à deux pas de _l’Emile_, et _les Aventures du Chevalier de - Faublas_—une nouveauté—non loin de _l’Histoire philosophique des - Indes_,” - -all of which books, by a kind of moral exercise of his imagination we -cannot sufficiently deplore, he found exhaling “une odeur de volupté -perverse, quelque chose comme le parfum aphrodisiac des seringes et des -tubereuses dans une chambre close.” - - -Every dwelling-house has its own peculiar atmosphere, sometimes -agreeable, sometimes not. But, whatever its quality, so characteristic -and persistent are some of them that I am sure a blind man would always -be able to tell them by the smell alone. Few of us may be gifted with -the analytical nose of a Charles Dickens to detect the ingredients that -make up a complex domiciliary atmosphere, but everybody must have -noticed that basement houses smell differently from bungalows, the -former greeting you with a harmonious blend of earthiness, soapsuds, and -sinks. - -Nay! The house you live in has a separate odour for each room: the -drawing-room with its chintzes; the snuggery with its stale tobacco, -and, perhaps, like an insinuating nudge, with a whiff of the stronger -alcohols; the bedrooms, if your housekeeper knows her business, with the -freshness of well-aired linen. - -The very days of the week have each its own particular olfactory mark, -dating from our childhood: Sundays (in Scotland), peppermint followed by -roast beef and richness; Mondays, pickles and soapsuds; Tuesday, the -damp airs from the washing hung up to dry; Wednesdays, warmth and -beeswax from the laundry, with ever and anon the thump of the flat iron; -Thursdays, bread new from the baker and the washing of floors with soft -soap—“Mind yer feet, now!”—Fridays, jam-boiling and the -never-to-be-forgotten aroma of oat-cakes on the girdle; Saturdays—but -Saturday is a day of wind and banging doors, of tops and dust; all its -smells are out of doors. - - -Shops, too! What of the coffee-shop?—Who does not pause a moment at that -door when the beans are roasting? One of the richest of all odours that; -curious how you lose it in the beverage! Then there is the ironmonger’s, -where the sharp smell of steel strikes, by some strange reflex, the -upper incisor teeth and gums; the oil and colour shop, with its putty, -turpentine, and general clamminess; and, last and best of all, the -druggist’s! - -What about the fried fish-shop? Faugh! I once for a reason connected -with my calling had cause to spend a whole night in a room above a -fish-shop—once only. The next time (there never will be a next time, she -swears, but there always is)—the next time I happened, curiously enough, -to arrive late! - -But although houses and rooms and, as we hinted, streets also, all smell -differently, each town and city has its own peculiar fundamental odour. -There is a town in Yorkshire that smells of “mungo.” I know another that -smells of mineral oil, and many that exhale the dank smell of the -coal-mine. - -London has a smell of its own, a fundamental familiar odour, which, by -the way, has changed of late. Twenty years ago it was faintly acid with -a background of horses and harness. To-day it is a mixture of tar and -burned lubricating oil, by no means so pleasant. In addition to these, -however, there is another and less prominent odour characteristic of the -London atmosphere, which I confess I cannot describe. - - “Once upon a time, some forty years ago, there lived at Highgate, - which then still retained some of the characters of a village, a - lady who declared that when a yellow fog drifted up from London she - could detect the smell of tobacco smoke in it. To most people the - odour is flatly that of coal smoke, which is perhaps always more or - less to be perceived in London air. This at any rate would seem to - have been the opinion of Edward Jenner, if we may trust a note made - by Farington in his diary for 1809, which is being printed in the - _Morning Post_. Farington’s note is as follows: - - “‘Dr. Jenner observed to Lawrence that He could by smelling at His - Handkerchief on going out of London ascertain when he came into an - atmosphere untainted by the London air. His method was to smell at - His Handkerchief occasionally, and while He continued within the - London atmosphere He could never be sensible of any taint upon it; - but, for instance, when He approached Blackheath and took His - Handkerchief out of His pocket where it had not been exposed to the - better air of that situation—His sense of smelling having become - more pure he could perceive the taint. His calculation was that the - air of London affected that in the vicinity to the distance of three - miles’” (_The Lancet_). - -Paris, in like manner, has its own peculiar aroma. Lord Frederick -Hamilton analyses it correctly into “one-half wood-smoke, one-quarter -roasting coffee, and one-quarter drains.” But for myself the Paris air -always brings a curious half-suppressed feeling of excitement, part of -it pleasure, part apprehension, as if something tremendous were about to -happen. But here perhaps we cross the border-line between conscious -sensation and subconscious stimulation. - -Rome is a city of candles and incense mingled with the dry mustiness of -crumbling skeletons. - -In Edinburgh you encounter here and there the smell of old Scotland. -Thatch enters into its make-up, why I cannot tell you. But the cold grey -metropolis still preserves the soul of the thatch, a cosy sensation that -is prone to bring tears to the eyes of the returning exile. - -In Glasgow damp soot struggles with the smell of the Bromielaw for the -mastery. - -Dublin mingles the warm, rich aroma of Guinness’s Brewery with the cold -smell of a corpse from the Liffey. - -Those are the cities I know best myself. But I have often been told, and -can quite believe it, that every city has its own particular atmosphere. - - -Some days, both in a city and in the country, are as rich and full of -odours as a Turner picture is rich and various in colour. Other days -bring us but a grey Whistlerian monotone, in which, nevertheless, the -trained sense delights to distinguish an infinity of tender shades, -unobserved by the casual. - - -I used to think that country smells were particularly dear to the -country-born only, and that their charm lay in their evocation of -childish memories. But that is not the whole of the story. They attract -us by their own inherent beauty. I have known town-bred lads linger -about a stable because the smell, I was told, was “so sweet.” And most -of us are, to be sure, sufficiently horsey to enjoy that smell of straw -and ammonia. We linger near it as bees haunt clover or cats valerian. -And we are all horse-lovers sitting behind a smart cob on a hot day when -the smell of the harness is mingling with the horse-odour. But these now -old-world odours are being every day more and more ousted by the less -pleasant smells of the motor-car, petrol, lubricating oil, and -acetylene—a pure stink this last. - - -But the farm is an olfactory museum, a library, a symphony! How warm and -comforting is the smell of a byre full of cows! Plunge into it from the -cool of the evening and listen again to the sudden swish of the warm -milk into the pail, the uncompleted low of the sober cattle and the -rattle of the chain as they turn to look at the new-comer. A gentle -relaxation of the spirit attends the visit like the relief of the limbs -from a cramped position, and we readily fall into that mood, so rare -these latter days, when attention disperses and the reins drop on the -neck of the mind so that it wanders on at its will up and down the lanes -and by-ways of fancy. These paths are dangerous, to be sure, leading as -they do to the Castle of Indolence, where you may dream your life away -and be none the wiser. - -Yet there must be many who have so wandered regardless, and have wakened -up too late to recapture the days they have lost in dreaming, if they -ever do want to recapture them, which is doubtful. If we really intended -happiness in life—as we do not; what we intend, and ensure, too, for -that matter, is excitement—but if we really intended happiness, here is -where we should find it, in and about a farmyard as hangers-on. Not as -the farmer, needless to say, to whose mind these olfactory stimuli are -stimulant, not anodyne. So that there can be no greater contrast than -that between him and us. Every one knows how the idler idling irritates -the worker working. And so we are brought back to reality all too soon -by the slap of fate, waking up from a bank of thyme and dreams to the -pavement of worry and hard work. - -But it is sweet while it lasts, and if you can acquire, or are lucky -enough to have been born with, pachydermia of the soul, then it may last -for a lifetime—unless, that is to say, fate, as aforesaid, in the shape -of the farmer, brings you back a-bump to earth with a clout on the side -of the head and an order to take the hook and cut down thistles. - -Stevenson has told us that idling is no loss of time. Perhaps not, if we -happen to be geniuses. But the mischief is that the rest of your family -deny (with oaths) the major premiss, and the prophet-without-honour -consolation prize is but a poor substitute for the loss of comfortable -eternities dozed away beside the lazy kine. - - -Some time in the ’eighties of last century a French professor (Jaccoud) -recommended the air of a byre as beneficial in phthisis. - -I have known worse cures. - - -Why do not the perfume-makers present us with more of these gateways to -Paradise, short cuts beside which De Quincey’s laudanum in the -waistcoat-pocket is but a by-path to hell? We might be given odours of -peace and contentment—think of them in the hands of a clever wife! We -might make libraries of them as people make libraries of gramophone -records. So far all we have are flower scents, like roses, lilies, -violets, and outlandish Eastern aromata, redolent rather of vice and its -excitements than of virtue and its placidity. - - -Then there is the scent of thyme and roses in the farm garden. This -brings to me old Sundays and ladies passing the open garden-gate on -their way to church, with their Bible carefully wrapped up in a clean -pocket-handkerchief, bearing with them also what somebody in Scotland -calls “the odour of sanctity”—peppermints, to wit—and all the time the -bees are humming in the warm air a deep note to the trills and runs of -the skylark lost in the blue. - -But I could wander on for an eternity with these smell memories and -pictures. One more, and I have done with the farm, and that is the cool -smell of the milk-house. It is dark there after the blaze outside, and -the stone flags strike cold to a boy’s bare feet wandering in from the -burning cobbles of the courtyard. As your eyes become accustomed to the -dimness you can see on the floor the wide, shallow milk coolers, silvery -as full moons in that twilight, the only light that enters coming -through the long slit of a narrow unglazed window where blistery leaves -of green docken, springing rank from the unkempt garden without, show a -splash of sunlight. The smell is sourish and cold, if we may speak, as I -think we may, of the temperature of a smell. This is forbidden land to -boys for obvious reasons, but so strong is the impression that I have -never forgotten my one and only visit to that secluded chamber. - - -What is it that gives to a dungeon its characteristic smell? Emphatic as -a blow. Obviously, we have here a combination of several sense -impressions, tactile, visual, olfactory: tactile, for the air is damp -and chilly; visual, for it is a blank, a negative, and yet a powerful -influence; olfactory, smelling ominous and of death. Old dried bones -emit precisely the same exhalation. In a subtle way, too, the presence -of mould is perceptible, all blending into the horrible and grisly -atmosphere of despair; the Valse Triste and the Dance of Death. - -Smell can bring as certainly and as irresistibly as music emotions of -all sorts to the mind. - -In this same category we may place the dusty smell of a dry hay-loft, -which is curiously like that of bitter almonds and hydrocyanic acid. It -has a sensation like ghostly fingers fumbling about your neck with a -threat, half playful, half serious, of suffocation. And, curiously -enough, the mental feeling of throttling fingers is not amiss. Prussic -acid kills by paralysing the respiratory centres. - - -Let us get out into fresh air again! The sun is shining. A gentle breeze -from the west is snowing the lawn with fragrant hawthorn blossoms. I -catch a whiff of delicate lilac, and see coming towards me over the -grass a slender figure in white.... - -And so we close with the perfumes of the spring, sunshine, and beauty. - - - - - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS - - -The impulse of which this study of olfaction is the outcome emanated -from Sir St. Clair Thomson, who three years ago handed me for my -edification and growth in knowledge the _Essai d’Olfactique -Physiologique_, a _Thèse de Bruxelles_, by _A. Heyninx_, dated 1919. - -In addition to that work the following have been utilised, for the -scientific side of the subject at all events:— - - _Poncelet, P. P._ Chimie du Goût et de l’Odorat, etc. Paris. 1755. - - _Parker, G. H._ Smell, Taste, and Allied Senses in the Vertebrates. - n.d. - - _Deite, C._ Manual of Toilet Soap-Making. Eng. Trans., 2nd ed. London. - 1921. - - _Ogle, Wm._ Medico-Chir. Trans., Vol. LIII., p. 263. - - _Bonvier, E. L._ The Psychic Life of Insects. Eng. Trans. London. - 1922. - -In Heyninx’s book there is a good bibliography, but the English reader -will find an excellent _résumé_ of recent scientific literature in -_Osmics_, by Mr. J. H. Kenneth, published by Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh. - -It is impossible in the space at my disposal to print a bibliography -dealing with the historical aspect of olfaction. - -In addition to my debt to books, I am also under deep obligation to Dr. -Wyatt Wingrave, Dr. Arnold Renshaw, Mr. Archer Ryland, Mr. F. W. -Watkyn-Thomas, and Mr. T. H. Fairbrother, for many valuable hints and -criticisms, as well as for much useful information, and I take this -opportunity of offering my thanks to them for their kind interest. - - - - - INDEX - - - Acetone poisoning, Odour of, 84 - - Adsorption of odours, 113 - - Æneid, The, Odour in, 72 - - Albinos, Anosmia of, 116, 126 - - Alcoholism, Odour of, 84 - - Alexander the Great, 77 - - Ambergris, 106 - - Ammonia, 94 - - Animals, Lower, Olfaction in, 21 - - Aniseed, 71 - - Anosmia, 23, 115, 142 - - Anti-demoniac treatment by fumigation, 67 - - Ants, Olfaction in, 28 - - Apoplectick, Balsam of Horstius, 69 - - Aromatics, The, 119 - - Asthma from horses, 93 - - Asafœtida, 71 - - Aura, Olfactory, 91 - - - Bacon, Francis, 84 - - Badger, Olfaction in, 37 - - Bat and sound-pictures, 32 - - Bath, The domestic, 18 - - Baudelaire, 51 - - Bay, 73 - - Bazin, Réné, 144 - - Bean-flowers, Fragrance of, 145 - - Beltane fires, 143 - - Bolboceros beetle, 37 - - Books, Smell of, 146 - - Brain, Olfactory Routes in, Unknown, 136 - - Brewer, Anthony, 53 - - Browning, Robert, 71 - - Burton, Robert, 78 - - - Cairo, Cholera in, 68 - - Camphor as disinfectant, 70 - - Carminatives, 71 - - Castelli’s theory of vision, 127 - - Cats, Aversion towards, 92 - - Cities and towns, Smells of, 150 - - Civet, 106 - - Collins, Wilkie, 47 - - Colosseum, Perfumes in the, 56 - - Coumarin, 105 - - Creighton, 84 - - Crowd-psychology and Odour, 97 - - - Death, Odour of, 84 - - Deite, 104, 117 - - Devil, Odour of the, 63, 73 - - Dickens, Charles, 54, 148 - - Disease, Epidemic, and Stenches, 5, 66 - Odours of, 83 - - Disraeli, Benj., 12 - - Dog, The, and the Abominable, 80 - Olfaction in the, 34, 87 - truffle-hunter, the, 34 - - Dostoievsky, 56 - - Dwelling-houses, Odours of, 148 - - - Eau de Cologne, 57 - - Einstein and the ether, 138 - - Ellis, Havelock, 86, 87, 96 - - Equilibration, Vocabulary of, 59 - - - Fabre, 25, 29, 36, 92 - Olfaction in dogs, 36 - insects, 25 - on nature of odour, 38 - - Fairbrother, T. H., 120, 132 - - Farington’s Diary, 151 - - Farm, Smells of, 153 - - Favus, Smell of, 84 - - Fischer and Penzoldt, 108 - - Fish, Olfaction in, 32 - - Flavour an odour, 43, 114 - - Flavours, High, 82 - compounding of, 101 - - Flowers, Perfumes of, Diffusion of, after rain, 112 - and insects, 28 - - Folk-lore, Smell in, 66 - - Forel, Olfaction in insects, 25, 30 - - Fumigation, treatment by, 66 - for cholera, in modern times, 68 - - - Garlic, 45, 57 - - Geraniol, 105 - - Gladstone, W. E., 90 - - Goethe, 95 - - Gordon, Douglas, and olfaction in badger, 37 - - - Hæmorrhage, Odour of, 83 - - Hamilton, Lord Frederick, 151 - - Harte, Bret, 51 - - Hay fever, 93 - - Head, Henry, 130 - - Health, Public, and Olfaction, 1 - - Hearing, End organ of, 98 - Exhaustion of, 17 - Vocabulary of, 60 - - Hell, Odour of, 73 - - Henning, 119 - - Heyninx, 110, 119 - Classification of odours, 103, 124 - Undulatory theory of odour, 121 - - History, Smell in, 77 - - Hogarth, 70 - - Holmes, Oliver Wendell, and Olfactory memory, 51 - - Homer, 73 - - Homing instinct, 30 - - Hospitals of olden days, of, 83 - - Humboldt, 64 - - Hutchison, 116 - - Hydrocyanic acid, 119, 131, 157 - - Hysteria, Treatment of, by stenches, 71 - - - Incense, 51, 53, 56, 68, 72 - - Incubus repelled by aromatics, 74 - - Industries, Malodorous, 14 - - Infra-red light rays, 122, 129 - absorption by odorous vapours, 131 - - Insects, Olfaction in, 25 - and hygiene, 29 - - Iodoform, 16, 103, 129, 131 - - Ireland, Odours in, 3, 152 - - - James I., “Counterblaste,” 142 - - Jenner, Edward, 151 - - - Kipling, Rudyard, 55 - - - Lavender, English, 106 - - Lodge, Sir Oliver, 121 - - London, Smells of, 150 - - Louis XI., 78 - - Louis XIV., 77 - - Love and Olfaction, 85 - - Lubbock, Sir John, 25, 30 - - - Macrosmatic animals, 22 - - Memory, Olfactory, 43 - Strengthening of, by Odours, 53, 69, 70 - - Mercaptan, 39 - - Meredith, George, 89 - - Microsmatic animals, 22 - - Mignonette, 105 - - Molecular structure of odorous bodies, 117 - - Molecules, Vibration of, 121 - - Montaigne, 53 - - Moths, Olfaction in, 25 - - Mummification by aromatics, 67 - - Musk, 28, 75, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 117 - - - Nauseous remedies, 70 - - Nephritis, Acute, Smell of, 83 - - Nerve, Fifth Cranial, 94 - Olfactory, 23 - - Nitrobenzol, 119 - - Nose, Olfactory Region of, 114 - Pigment in, 116 - - - Odericus Vitalis, 76 - - Odours, Clashing of, 129 - Classifications of, 102 - Clinging of, 113 - Concentrated, Anosmia for, 110 - Diffusion of, 39, 108, 112 - Effect of cold on, 112 - of Disease, 83 - Harmony between, 129 - Identification of, 65 - Nature of, 38, 98 _et seq._ - Novel, 101 - Personal, 76 - Physical theory of, 42, 116 - of poisonous herbs, 126 - Recollection of, 47 - Repulsive, 79 - in water, 33 - Theories of, 98 - Chemical, 116, 132 - Undulatory theory of, 42, 116, 120 - Criticism of, 129 - Varieties of, 100 - - Ogle, 116 - - Olfaction. _See also_ SMELL. - Allusions to, in literature, 51 _et seq._ - and digestion, 136 - a primitive sense, 21 - Evolution of, 21 - in fish, 33 - in insects, 25 - in the lower animals, 21 - in the sex-life, 85 - Theories of, 98 _et seq._ - and ventilation, 17, 109 - - Olfactory cells, 23 - hairs, 23, 121 - memory, 43 - organ, 23 - of insects, 28 - pictures, 140 _et seq._ - pigment, 24, 116, 125 - region of nose, 114 - - Onions, effect of, 94 f.n. - - Orientation. _See_ Homing Instinct. - - - Paracelsus, 70 - - Paris, Smell of, 151 - - Parker, G. H., 100, 104, 108 - - Pawlow, 136 - - Peppermint, 71 - - Perfumes, Classification of, 103 - New varieties of, 107 - Sources of, 105 - - Pigment, Olfactory, 24, 125 - - Pinewood, Odour of burning, 143 - - Plague, Sweet smell of, 84 - - Poncelet, P. P., 59 - - - Queen Elizabeth, 3 - - - Reality, Objective, 137 - - Religion, Smell in, 72 - - Remedies, Nauseous, 70 - Olfactory, 66 - - Rheumatism, Acute, Acid smell of, 83 - - Ribot and olfactory memory, 48, 50 - - Rimmel, Classification of odours, 103 - - Roberts, Lord, and cats, 92 - - Rohmer, Sax, 74 - - Rose perfume, 57, 105 - and exhaustion, 16 - - Roses, Attar of, 105 - - Rousseau, 100, 141 - - - Sacrifice, Savour of, 72 - - Saints, Odour of the, 74 - - Saintsbury, George, 103 - - Salerno, Teaching of, on garlic, 47 - - Salmon’s Dispensatory, Fumigation in, 68 - - Sandal-wood, 113 - - Scatol, 16, 80 - - Scott, Sir Walter, 67 - - Sea, Smell of, 144 - - Sea-anemone, Olfactory cells of, 24 - - Sensation, Nature of, 134 - Tactile. _See_ Touch. - - Sensory end-organ, Specific reaction of, 130 - - Shakespeare, 52, 86–89 - - Shelley, 47 - - Shops, Smell of, 149 - - Sinistrari of Ameno, 74 - - Sins, Odour of the, 74 - - Small-pox, Smell of, 83 - - Smell and the Emotions, 91, 95, 142 _et seq._ - in Folk-Lore, Religion, and History, 66 - and the Personality, 74, 87, 141 - Exhaustibility of, 15, 133 - Sensation of, 134 - Sense of, Acuteness of, in man, 141 - Cultivation of, 140 - in old age, 82, 126 - in uncivilised man, 64 - mystery of, 139 - Reaction-time of, 111 - Sense Organ of, 23, 101, 107 - Delicacy of, 107 - Potential responsiveness of, 101 - and Speech, 59 - Subtlety of, in man, 44, 56 - Vocabulary of, Emotional, 61 - Etymology of, 61 _et seq._ - - Smith, Elliot, 72 - - Spectrum analysis of odours, 123 - - Speech and smell, 59 - - Spiders, Aversion towards, 92 - - Stenches a nuisance in law, 12 - in Cologne, 8 - in the East, 10 - in Edinburgh, 11 - in France, 9 - in London, 11, 13 - in Lucerne, 8 - Industrial, 14 - - Subconsciousness, Smell and the, 44, 56, 64, 65, 79, 91, 95, 139 - - Sulphur compounds, Organic, 15 - - - Taste and smell contrasted, 43 - Exhaustion of, 17 - Vocabulary of, 60 - - Tasting wine with closed eyes, 115 - - Terminology, Olfactory, Scanty, 59 _et seq._ - - Theatre, The, Perfumes in, 56 - - Theuriet, André, 148 - - Tobacco, Effect of, on olfactory sense, 142 - - Touch, Vocabulary of, 60 - - Truffle-hunter, The, 36 - - Tyndall, 130 - - Typhus fever, Odour of, 83 - - - Ultra-violet light rays, 122 - absorbed by odorous bodies, 122 - - Unconscious, The. _See_ Subconsciousness. - - - Valerian, 71, 115 - - Vanillin, 39 - - Ventilation and sense of smell, 17, 109 - - Vervain, 80 - - Violets, 110 - - Vision, End organ of, 98 - Vocabulary of, 59 - - Vocabulary of Smell, Scanty, 59 _et seq._ - - Volatility and odours, 113 - - - Walking-stick, Medical, 70 - - Watkyn-Thomas, F. W., 53 - - Wilkes, John, 90 - - Whitman, Walt, 77 - - - Zebethum occidentale, 71 - - Zwaardemaker, 114 - Classification of odours, 102 - Olfactometer, 107 - - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND - TONBRIDGE. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors. - 2. All spelling errors were left uncorrected. - 3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers. - 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - 5. 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