THE DOG'S SMELL 85 
Downs, where I used to take my walks, the various 
strong smells of the earth and vegetation, and of the 
village, would come as a surprise and amuse me with 
the notion that I had recovered a long-lost faculty. 
Undoubtedly there is a very considerable differ- 
ence in the smelling powers of different persons, but 
the difference appears greater owing to the variety 
of conditions in which we live, and to the fact that 
if we live with smells, however pleasing or disagree- 
able they may be when newly met, we become un- 
conscious of them. I think of the dog's smell in this 
connection, and note that when I speak to my friends 
about it they invariably asseverate that the dog, if 
clean, has no smell at all. The fact that you see 
dogs in the arms of half the ladies who are out for a 
drive in their cars, that you find them everywhere 
in drawing-rooms, not as casual guests, but residents 
there, as a rule in possession of the most comfortable 
seats in the room, is taken as a proof that they have 
no smell. Having become unconscious of the smell 
themselves from living in it, they imagine it is so 
with others. Out of doors a dog has no smell for me 
unless he gets too near by throwing himself on me 
and trying to lick my face. But in a room I am as 
conscious of his smell as I am of the smell of a fox, 
or of rabbits or sheep. It is to me a disgusting smell, 
and if asked to describe it, I should say that it is a 
carrion smell; not the smell of carrion lying or drying 
in the sun, but of a dead animal lying and decom- 
posing in a pool of water in hot weather. Long 
experience in a wild cattle country, where during the 
