I S the sense of smell dying out among civilised men
? Physiologists tell us that although an entire segment of the brain—viz., the olfactory lobe—is apportioned to the olfactory fibres, what we now possess is probably " the mere remnant of a once powerful mechanism." In the brute creation the sense is much keener, although among the lower aquatic animals it is indiscriminately blended with that of taste, and in the toothed whales is non-existent. On the other hand, dogs, especially those that have been trained to hunt by scent, seem to depend upon that faculty almost entirely, even to the exclusion of their eyesight. If it is a "bad scenting" day, or if his nose is out of order, you may see a retriever literally walk over a dead bird, or even lie down on the top of it, a pretty clear proof that he is not looking for his quarry; he is smelling for it. A fox in covert will sometimes run in and out among the very legs of the pack unnoticed, although in this case the necessity for keeping their heads down (owing to the fact that animal smells are heavy and lie close to the ground) will serve to prevent bounds from using their eyes. A terrier will race down a drive, barking ecstati- cally at the sight of his master, but even then he will usually give him a preliminary sniff before he is absolutely satisfied of his identity.
Generally speaking, sweet odours are more persistent than their opposite, the sulphuretted compounds in particular evaporating rapidly on exposure to the atmosphere, although the smell of decaying animal matter is said to endure for days after the cause of it has been removed. The olfactory sense, however, usually becomes blunted in time when assailed continuously by any one odour ; workmen in the big per- fumeries become case-hardened to the fragrance of their surroundings, and "nose-pain" is fortunately even more deadening in its effects than most forms of physical suffering. Again, different smells do not mix ; it is said that if the two nostrils are stuffed with different substances, we smell first one and then the other alternately, but never a blending of the two together. This is probably the case with the lower animals, too, and explains how foxhounds can pick out and follow the trail of a fox over ground that has been tainted by sheep or cattle ; the writer, personally, has seen. a pointer find birds successfully all one afternoon on the Western prairies, what time the dog himself was so odoriferous, owing to an unfortunate encounter with a skunk on the previous day, that he was hardly approachable.
Among human individuals the sense of smell, like those of sight and hearing, varies considerably, and. certain persons seem to be quite unaffected by certain odours ; just as others are " colour-blind " to certain colours, or " tone-deaf " to the shrill call of a bat or the chirping of a cricket. Perhaps it is indicative of the manner in which we are discontinuing the
use of our noses that there is no one word in the English language (such as " blindness " or " deafness") signifying the complete absence of the perception of smell, although the condition undoubtedly exists, and is, indeed, not uncommon as a sequela of some diseases.
It is true that we may claim a superiority to the brute creation in the range of our susceptibility to various odours, for the carnivores seem to be quite insensible to the scent of plants and flawers, while the herbivores pay little attention to animal odours, except for the purpose of detecting the approach of enemies. But we are certainly inferior to them in acuteness, at all events we of the civilised races, although there seems to be no reason why this sense should not be cultivated and its efficiency reinforced by deliberate training. This view is supported by the fact that men born deaf and dumb and blind have been known to develop their latent powers of smell to a pitch of perfection quite un- intelligible to ordinary mortals. We use spectacles to assist the eyesight, ear-trumpets and artificial ear-drums to correct deafness ; why should not science supply us with some handy instrument that would stimulate the olfactory fibres, or magnify the potency of effluvia ? There are many ways in which such an addition to our physical (and mental) equip- ment might be useful, for the nose has one cardinal advantage over the eyes in that it is quite independent of light. After all, even the range of vision may be out-distanced by that of smell, if it be true, for instance, that the Spice. Islands of the Indian Archipelago are to be distinguished far out at sea, long before they have been sighted from the look- out. According to Humboldt, the Peruvian Indians on the darkest night can not only perceive the approach of a stranger while still far distant, but can even tell whether he is a negro, or an Indian, or a European. The Arabs of the desert are said to smell fire thirty or forty miles away. The Indian of North America certainly uses his nose in the pursuit of game, and Major-General Baden-Powell has strongly recommended the practice to white men in his treatise on scouting.
But it is not only savages and uncivilised tribes who surpass us in the efficiency of this particular organ, and in the attention which they pay to its education. With the Japanese " incense-snuffing " has reached the dignity of a ceremonial. It has been practised, we are told, by priests and daimios for the last four hundred years, and is taken very seriously indeed; grave essays have been written on the subject, and an elaborate code of etiquette has been formu- lated for its observance. It is also a form of entertainment, and at a kiki-ki; party your host produces, on a special tray, some twenty or more different kinds of incense, from which he selects five, to each one of which he gives a different name, founded on some literary allusion, each name re- ceiving a number. " The various kinds are then burnt in irregular order, sometimes in combination of two or three kinds, and the guests have to write down the corresponding numbers on slips of paper by means of certain signs symbolical of the chapters in a celebrated classical romance called Grenji-mono-gatari.' " The person who guesses their identity most successfully wins a prize, and between sniffs you are allowed a whiff of vinegar to refresh your jaded nostrils. In New York an attempt was made recently to found a series of " perfume concerts," where scent took the place of music, but the energetic Americans voted the entertainment slow, and the innovation was hardly a success.
There is another reason for which it might be worth our while to pay more attention to this particular sense,—for its mnemonic suggestiveness. The faculty of memory plays a rather queer part in connection with that of smelling, although around it our mental associations cluster most strongly. For it is very doubtful whether anybody can actually call up, or " represent," a particular odour, though there are cases of sub- jective hallucinations of scent among the insane, and the records of the Society for Psychical Research quote instances of what we might call the "ghost" of a smell. On the other hand, scent is a most powerful stimulant to memory :— " Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack. They start those awful voices o' nights That whisper 'Old man, come back.'
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg, Riding in, in the rain."
It is the "spicy garlic smell" of the bazaar that "sets the East a-calling" ; the scent of tar and cordage that wakes a
longing for the open sea; the reek of peat that calls up the "lone abieling on the misty island " to the Orkney man on the prairie ; the fragrance of some special flower which quickens memory for a moment into leaping flame, and then lets it flicker down to a dim, perfumed haze of long- forgotten, visionary things.
The Indians in the North-West will scrape off the inner bark of the red willow, dry it in the sun, and then rub it between their fingers till it resembles a coarse-cut tobacco. As a rule, they mix it with the real article whenever the latter is procurable, but in times of scarcity they will smoke it un- adulterated. An American would tell you that it smells "tired," and if you lit a pipeful of it in an English smoking-room, some
one would probably complain that the carpet was on fire. But there are others for whom it will summon up pictures that are as vivid and convincing as the phantasmagoria of a haschisch-eater or the opium dreams of a De Quinces,. And these not through any inebriant potency of its own, but merely by the power of mental association and suggestion. To them a single whiff of the pungent incense of kinni-kinick will bring back the rush of tumbling waters between steep cliffs ; the throb along the keel of a canoe as it races past smooth bosses of green jade, where the flood is boiling over the treacherous boulders beneath; the quick stroke of the paddle as the bow swerves from the jagged, foam-ringed teeth of splintered rocks. Or the soft, padding tread of the moccasin in the pine-forests ; the moaning bellow of the cow-moose ; and the crackle of the camp-fire at night, when the luminous fan of the Northern Lights is shimmering in the dark blue vault above. Or the long narrow trails that wind under giant trees, and dip through the gulches of the Rocky Mountains ; the dingy tents of blue-chinned, black-moustached, rusty-booted prospectors, and pig-tailed Chinamen ; the trumpet-call of the wild swans on the great lakes, which cries to us that the Red gods are making their medicine again, and that "on the other side the world we're overdue."
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