160 OP 1 SMELL. 







244. The extreme filaments of the first pair do not 

 terminate in papillae, like the nerves of touch and taste, 

 but, as it were, deliquesce into the spongy and regular 

 parenchyma of the nasal membrane. 



245. The organ of smell is very imperfect and small 

 at birth. The sinuses scarcely exist. Smell conse- 

 quently takes place but late as the internal nostrils 

 are gradually evolved, and is more acute in proportion 

 to their size and perfection.* 



246. No external sense is so intimately connected 



a case of anosmia, following a compression of the first pair by a scirrhus. "We 

 learn, from comparative anatomy, that in the most sagacious mammalia, 

 v. c. elephants, bears, clogs, bisulcous ruminants, hedgehogs, &c. the hori- 

 zontal plate of the cribriform bone is very large, and perforated by an infinity 

 of small canals, each of which contains a filament of the olfactory nerve. 



* While animals of the most acute smell have the nasal organs most exten- 

 sively evolved, precisely the same holds in regard to some barbarous nations-. 

 For instance, in the head of the North American Indian (a leader of his nation, 

 and executed at Philadelphia about 50 years ago) , which I have given in the 

 First Decade of my Collection of the Crania of different Nations, illustrated by 

 nine plates, the internal nares are of an extraordinary size, so that the middle 

 of the ossa spongiosa, for instance, are inflated into immense bullae, and the 

 sinuses, first described by Santorini, which are contained in them, larger than I 

 have found them in any other instanqe. 



The nearest to these, in point of magnitude, are the internal nares of the 

 Ethiopians, from among whom I have seen seven heads, now before me, very 

 different from each other, but each possessing a nasal organ much larger than 

 we find it described to be in that nation by Sommcrring, fiber die korperl. 

 Verschicdenh. des Negcrs, ffc. p. 22. 



These anatomical observations accord with the accounts given by most re- 

 spectable travellers concerning the wonderful acuteness of smell possessed by 

 these savages. 



Respecting the North American Indians, consult among others Urlsperger, 

 Nachr. von dcr Grossbritann. Colonie Salzburg. Emigranten in America. 

 Vol. i. p. 862. 



Respecting the Ethiopians, Journal des Savant. 1667. p. 60. 



