ig8 KISSES 



smell, and can, on entering an empty room, recognise that 

 such and such a person has been there by the faint traces 

 not of perfumery carried by the visitor but of his 

 individual smell or odour. This brings us to one of the 

 most important facts about odorous bodies and the sense 

 of smell, namely, that not only do the various species of 

 animals (and plants) each have their own odour often 

 difficult or impossible for man, with his aborted olfactory 

 powers, to distinguish but that every individual has its 

 own special odour. As to how far this can be considered 

 a universal disposition is doubtful. It is probable that the 

 power of discriminating such individual odours is limited 

 (even in the case of dogs, where it is sometimes very highly 

 developed), to a power of discriminating the distinctive 

 smells of the individuals of certain species of animals, and 

 not of every individual of every species. Everyone knows 

 of the wonderful power of the bloodhound in tracking an 

 individual man by his smell, but dogs of other breeds also 

 often possess what seem to us extraordinary powers of the 

 kind. On a pebbly beach I pick up one smooth flint 

 pebble as big as a walnut. It is closely similar to thou- 

 sands of others lying there. I hold it in my hand without 

 letting my fox-terrier see it, and then I throw it. It drops 

 some eighty yards off among the other pebbles, and I 

 could not myself find it again. But the dog runs forward, 

 notes vaguely by ear and by eye the spot where it strikes, 

 and then commences a systematic circling within about ten 

 yards of the spot. In half a minute he pounces with the 

 utmost assurance on to one selected stone, and brings it to 

 me. It is invariably the stone which had been in my hand, 

 unseen by the dog, thrown by me, and detected by the smell 

 I have communicated to it. 



Not only is the discrimination of individuals by the sense 

 of smell a very astonishing thing, but so also is the obvious 

 fact that the total amount of odoriferous matter which is 



