FOOD AND FEEDING. 479 



given us a skin like the hide of a rhinoceros to protect us against the 

 future contingency of the invention of rifles. 



Sweets and bitters are really almost the only tastes proper, almost 

 the only ones discriminated by this central and truly gustatory region 

 of the tongue and palate. Most so-called flavorings will be found on 

 strict examination to be nothing more than mixtures with these of cer- 

 tain smells or else of pungent, salty, or alkaline matters, distinguished 

 as such by the tip of the tongue. For instance, paradoxical as it 

 sounds to say so, cinnamon has really no taste at all, but only a smell. 

 Nobody will ever believe this on first hearing, but nothing on earth is 

 easier than to put it to the test. Take a small piece of cinnamon, hold 

 your nose tightly, rather high up, between the thumb and finger, and 

 begin chewing it. You will find that it is absolutely tasteless ; you 

 are merely chewing a perfectly insipid bit of bark. Then let go your 

 nose, and you will find immediately that it " tastes " strongly, though 

 in reality it is only the perfume from it that you now permit to rise 

 into the smelling-chamber in the nose. So, again, cloves have only 

 a pungent taste and a peculiar smell, and the same is the case more or 

 less with almost all distinctive flavorings. When you come to find of 

 what they are made up, they consist generally of sweets or bitters, 

 intermixed with certain ethereal perfumes, or with pungent or acid 

 tastes, or with both or several such together. In this way, a compara- 

 tively small number of original elements, variously combined, suffice 

 to make up the whole enormous mass of recognizably different tastes 

 and flavors. 



The third and lowest part of the tongue and throat is the seat of 

 those peculiar tastes to which Professor Bain, the great authority upon 

 this important philosophical subject, has given the names of relishes 

 and disgusts. It is here, chiefly, that we taste animal food, fats, but- 

 ters, oils, and the richer class of vegetables and made dishes. If we 

 like them, we experience a sensation which may be called a relish, and 

 which induces one to keep rolling the morsel farther down the throat, 

 till it passes at last beyond the region of our voluntary control. If we 

 don't like them, we get the sensation which may be called a disgust, 

 and which is very different from the mere unpleasantness of exces- 

 sively pungent or bitter things. It is far less of an intellectual and 

 far more of a physical and emotional feeling. We say, and say rightly, 

 of such things that we find it hard to swallow them ; a something 

 within us (of a very tangible nature) seems to rise up bodily and pro- 

 test against them. As a very good example of this experience, take 

 one's first attempt to swallow cod-liver oil. Other things may be 

 unpleasant or unpalatable, but things of this class are in the strictest 

 sense nasty and disgusting. 



The fact is, the lower part of the tongue is supplied with nerves 

 in close sympathy with the digestion. If the food which has been 

 passed by the two previous examiners is found here to be simple and 



