6 2 THE QUEENSLAND SAVAGE 



in her although it may have given no evidence of its 

 existence for some time past when I see this, know- 

 ing at the same time that the violets' " nimble 

 emanations " are filling the whole room, I recognise 

 the fact that the sense of smell is so enfeebled in her 

 as to be of no account at all; also that it may be 

 the same in a majority of the inhabitants of London 

 and of all the great urban centres of human life 

 in England. All that doesn't come to much, seeing 

 that England is but a dot on the map and its people 

 a mere roomful compared with the population of the 

 globe. What one asks to know is, does the Armenian, 

 the Turk, the Siberian, the Zulu, the Arab, the in- 

 habitant of the Roof of the World, press a flower to 

 his nose in order to get the sensation of its fragrance ? 

 When the traveller and naturalist Lumholtz lived 

 with the cannibal and ophiophagous tribes of Queens- 

 land, he found that they hunted the serpent, a large 

 species of boa on which they fed, by its scent. This 

 serpent travels long distances in quest of prey, and 

 once on its scent the natives would follow it like a 

 pack of beagles, through woods and thicket, marshes, 

 over rocky tracts and all kinds of country, until they 

 came up with it. The scent, they assured him, was 

 quite strong and easy to follow, but though he went 

 down on all-fours and sniffed with all his might, 

 he could detect no scent at all. There is, then, a 

 considerable difference between man and man with 

 regard to this sense in different countries and con- 

 ditions. The man of the physiologist is the one he 

 knows, who is of his own state in life, who lives in 



