sense
which nature has granted." " Is it an apparatus which is developing ?
or one that is wasting away ? a somnolent, or an awakening faculty ?
Everything leads us to think it is becoming evolved on the same lines
as our advancing civilization. The ancients interested themselves
almost exclusively in the coarser the heavier, the unrefined, solid (so
to speak) smells ; as those of musk, benzoin, incense, whilst the
fragrance of flowers has received but sparse mention in Greek, and
Latin poetry, or in Hebrew literature."
Botanists
of late have claimed the perfumes of flowers as spontaneously acquired
to serve chiefly for attracting insects, so as to fertilise the flowers
which they consecutively visit. But difficulties arise about granting
this hypothesis ; thus, many of the sweetest-scented flowers do not
admit of cross-fertilisation by insects ; again, because insects seek
rather the pollen, and the nectar, (which are odourless), than obey the
attraction of floral scents; they besiege in crowds the flowers of the
maple, and the hazel-tree, whilst disregarding flowers of delicious
perfume, such as the rose, the carnation, etc.
There
are, therefore, strong reasons for making this sense of smell a further
study ; of questioning it, and cultivating its possibilities. Who can
foreknow the surprises it keeps in store for us if brought to equal the
perfection of our sight,—as it does in the dog,—which lives as much by
the nose as by the eyes \
We
have here a world almost unexplored as yet. This mysterious sense,
which seems almost foreign to our organism, becomes, perhaps, when more
carefully considered, that which enters into it most intimately. Is not
the air around us our most absolutely ^indispensable element ? and is
not our sense of smell just the one
