Dan McKenzie

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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”? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 16Curiously 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”