COURTSHIP, INSTINCT AND REASON 209 



distinctive odours, which they and their companions can 

 readily recognize, secreted by certain glands in the skin 

 placed here and there on the body, often on the legs and 

 toes. Some of these odours, like musk and civet, we 

 can perceive, though most have no effect on us. It 

 seems to be an evidence of the absence of any need for 

 man to produce " perfumes " by the action of his own 

 structure that he has a feeble sense of smell and has so 

 little perception of any perfumes or odours peculiar to 

 himself that he has when civilized always made use of 

 odorous substances (perfumes and scents) extracted from 

 other animals and from plants for the purpose, before 

 the days of cleanliness, of masking the unpleasant odours 

 of putrescence pervading his body and clothing. Later, 

 when dirt became less common, he made use of perfumes 

 for the purpose of giving an agreeable whiff to the 

 olfactory organs of his associates. 



In insects, for instance in moths and butterflies, and 

 no doubt in most if not all others, the sense of smell is 

 astonishingly keen, and serves as the great guide and 

 attraction in courtship and the appeasement of mate- 

 hunger. A single female emperor moth was placed in 

 a box covered with fine net in a room with an open 

 window in a country house. In three hours a dozen 

 males of this species had entered the room, but no other 

 moths. In twenty-four hours there were over a hundred, 

 all fluttering around the net-covered box in which was 

 the female. In this and other similar experiments it 

 was found that the odour of the female moth, though 

 imperceptible to man, clung to the box after she was 

 removed, and that, for some days following, the empty 

 box was nearly as powerful an attraction to the males 

 as when it contained the female. The antennae which 

 •carry the olfactory sense-organs are far larger in the 

 14 



