114 WILD ANIMALS SCENTING MAN. 



as have many other observant travellers. Mr. Francis 

 Galton, for example, is very explicit about it and 

 says 



" a man must frequently have watched the heads of a herd 

 of far distant animals tossed up in alarm the moment they 

 catch his wind; he must have observed the tracks of animals 

 where they have crossed his own, the beast that made them 

 has stopped, scrutinized, and shunned it, before he can 

 believe what a Yahoo he is among the brute creation. No 

 cleanliness of the individual seems to diminish this remarkable 

 odour ; indeed the more civilized the man, the more subtile 

 does it seem to be: the touch of a gamekeeper scares less 

 than that of the master ; and the touch of a negro, or bush- 

 man, less than that of a traveller from Europe." * 



It would be possible to furnish numerous curious and 

 remarkable details relative to this peculiar odour of man ; 

 and to show that most of the savage tribes are themselves 

 distinguishable one from the other on account of the dif- 

 ferent nature of their smell, even to the human nose. So 

 also among the different nationalities of civilized man ; 

 the aroma which pervades their dwelling houses, and their 

 towns, is so distinctly different, as to be easily noticed 

 by an observant stranger upon first visiting their country. 

 But however these things may be we may very safely 

 conclude that the terror which the odour of man 

 universally creates among the animal creation, at all 

 events, pervades all climates and all species from the 

 equator to the poles, and this whether the creatures have 

 previously met the human intruder or not. 



Amid the everlasting ice and snow of the higher 

 polar regions it has been found for example that the 

 arctic game, on first recognizing the presence of the 



* The Art of Travel, by Francis Galton, 1st Edit., 1885, p. 156. 



