ACUTENESS OF SMELL. 209 



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Any vigorous exercise, or eating, by exciting the secretions, 

 generally causes the sensation to disappear, the persistence 

 of which might be exceedingly inconvenient. 



Gerdy makes the sense of smell the counsellor of the 

 stomach. When the appetite is excited the smell of food is 

 agreeable; but it is repugnant, on the contrary, when hunger 

 is appeased, and the sense of smell warns us to take no more 

 food. We may say, with reason perhaps, that this sense 

 completes that of taste, by enabling us to appreciate the 

 aroma, without which food and drink would cause only a 

 gross sensation, or one at least entirely devoid of all delicacy. 

 When the sense of smell is lost, or even enfeebled, the taste, 

 perceiving flavours only, seems almost extinguished, existing - 

 alone. 



The sense of smell is very unequally developed in indivi- 

 duals, but it is said to be of extreme delicacy in some races 

 of men, and especially among savages. The stories recounted 

 of individuals following game by tracking, and of negroes 

 who could distinguish by smell the tracks of a negro from 

 those of a white man, seem to indicate a faculty quite as 

 nearly related to the sense of sight as to the one under con- 

 sideration; and it must be admitted also that individual ex- 

 perience and careful attention to particular circumstances 

 produce the same results when applied to the sense of smell, 

 as to sight or to hearing. 



