ODORS AND LIFE. 



DESCAETES, Leibnitz, and all the great minds of the 

 seventeenth century, believed that phenomena are such 

 interdependent parts of one whole, that they require to 

 be explained by each other, and consequently that a very 

 close mutual connection should be maintained among the 

 sciences. In their view, this was the condition of rapid 

 advance and intelligent development. The experimental 

 method, constant to systematic obstinacy in erecting so 

 many barriers between the different sections of natural 

 philosophy, has greatly hindered the completeness of what- 

 ever knowledge we possess as the result of mutual interac- 

 tion among all truths. At this day, such barriers are tend- 

 ing to vanish of their own accord, and the science of man 

 in his relations to external media begins to show the out- 

 lines of its plan and harmony. We have before this 

 sketched several of its chapters, and we will endeavor now 

 to write another, on the subject of odors. 



I. 



The seat of smell, or the olfactory sense, is the pituita- 

 ry membrane lining the inner wall of the nostrils. It is a 

 mucous surface, laid in irregular wrinkles, and receiving 

 the spreading, slender, terminal filaments of a certain 

 number of nerves. This membrane, like all other mucous 

 ones, constantly secretes a fluid designed to lubricate it. 



