ODORS AND LIFE. 



H7 



determined in a positive way. These relations, as concerns odors, 

 can have no other basis than a capricious and relative sensibility. 

 They are thus incapable of being reduced to form, a fortiori of being 

 translated into fixed precepts. 



To complete these details, it remains to say something of the de- 

 lusions of the sense of smell ; for this sense, like the others, has its 

 aberrations and hallucinations. The delusions of smell are hardly 

 ever isolated ; they accompany those of hearing, sight, taste, and 

 touch, and are also less frequent than the latter. Insane people, who 

 are affected by them, complain of being haunted by fetid emanations, 

 or congratulate themselves on inhaling the most delicious perfumes. 

 Lelut mentions the case of a woman, an inmate of la Salpetriere, who 

 fancied that she constantly perceived a frightful stench proceeding 

 from the decay of bodies she imagined buried in the courts of that in- 

 stitution. Impressions of the kind are usually very annoying. Brierre 

 de Boismont relates the account of a woman affected by disorder of all 

 her senses. Whenever she saw a well-dressed lady passing, she smelt 

 the odor of musk, which was intolerable to her. If it were a man, she 

 was distressingly affected by the smell of tobacco, though she was 

 quite aware that those scents existed only in her imagination. Capel- 

 lini mentions that a woman, who declared that she could not bear the 

 smell of a rose, was quite ill when one of her friends came in wearing 

 one, though the unlucky flower was only artificial. 



Such facts might be multiplied ; but, as they are all alike, it is not 

 worth while to mention more of them. The latest observations made 

 in insane asylums, among others, those of M. Prevost, at la Salpetriere, 

 have shown also that these delusions and perversions of the sense of 

 smell are more common than had hitherto been supposed among such 

 invalids, and that if they usually pass unnoticed, it arises from the 

 fact that nothing spontaneously denotes their existence. 



The intensity and delicacy of the sense of smell vary in mankind 

 among different individuals, and particularly among different races of 

 men. While some persons are almost devoid of the sense of smell, 

 others, whose history is related in the annals of science, have dis- 

 played a refinement and range in the distinction of odors truly won- 

 derful. Woodward, for instance, mentions a woman who foretold 

 storms several hours before their coming, by the help of the sulphur- 

 ous odor, due probably to ozone, which she perceived in the atmos- 

 phere. The scientific journals of the day relate the account of a young 

 American girl, a deaf-mute, who, by their odor alone, recognized the 

 plants of the fields which she collected. Numerous instances, more- 

 over, prove that in savage races this sense is very greatly more de- 

 veloped than among civilized men. It is a traveler's story, that some 

 tribes of Indians can pursue their enemies and animals of the chase by 

 mere scent. 



But it is among the other mammals that we find the sense of 



