SOLON ROBINSON, 1850 425 



beings, rear them in just such a place as I have described ; 

 scold them for being too fastidious if they "turn up their 

 noses" at the vile odors surrounding them, and you will 

 succeed in blunting the sense of smell and every other 

 faculty that distinguishes man from the brute. From 

 the brute ? That is a slander upon the delicate sensibility 

 of some of the brute creation, and nice faculty of the 

 sense of smell, which they possess, and which prompts 

 them to avoid locations that none but man, whose sensi- 

 bilities have been contaminated by long association with 

 filth, would ever think fit for a habitation. 



In the case of inferior animals, how wisely this faculty 

 has been adapted to their particular purposes! With 

 what unerring certainty the faithful dog follows the foot- 

 steps of his master through the masses of the crowded 

 street or wild jungle of the tangled forest ! God gave him 

 the sense of smell, and unlike man, he has not abused it. 



The strength of this sense in the blood hound is still 

 more wonderful. Give him but one smell of a cast-off 

 garment of the fugitive to be followed, and he will dis- 

 tinguish his track from all others. The acute intelligence 

 and determination which these animals evince in pursuit 

 of a quarry, is almost indescribable. The fineness of the 

 sense of smell, possessed by the deer, is often of great 

 advantage to the Laplander when travelling over a vast 

 expanse enshrouded in snow. It is only by their smell of 

 the moss, though buried several feet, that they can tell 

 whether the spot chosen to pitch the tent is upon land or 

 water. Many a lost traveller never would have been res- 

 cued from his snowy death bed, but for the delicate sense 

 of smell possessed by the convent dogs of the great St. 

 Bernard. Caravans, overwhelmed and lost amidst the 

 desert sands of Africa, have been saved from destruction 

 because the camel possessed and exercised a faculty that 

 man is constantly at work to blunt and destroy — a faculty 

 which, if cultivated, would add greatly to his happiness. 

 Who that possesses a refined sense of smell, though he 

 has spent years upon the ocean wave or city pavements. 



