56 HUMAN AND ANIMAL SENSATIONS. 



in cases where the human nose gives not a jot of 

 information ; but the vulture would instantly quit 

 a bed of roses for a rotten carcase, and the blood- 

 hound would forsake all the perfumes of Arabia in 

 order to gnaw a bone, although he had to scrape 

 that bone out of the dirtiest corner of the court- 

 yard. No doubt the sense of smell, in man, goes 

 so far hand in hand with the merely animal pro- 

 cess of getting nourishment ; for, as the proverb 

 says, " a hungry man smells meat far ;" and every 

 body must have felt how grateful the smell of the 

 kitchen is before dinner, and how intolerable just 

 after. But still the sense of smelling is not, as is 

 probably the case with that of tasting, wholly sub- 

 servient to the animal process of being fed. There 

 is a surplus part of it. That which distinguishes 

 violets, and roses, and orange flowers, and clove 

 pinks, and all the blooming perfumes of the gay 

 globe, rises above the mere getting of nourish- 

 ment ; and therefore it is a mental surplus given 

 to us for the joint purposes of knowledge and en- 

 joyment. It must, therefore, admit of being im- 

 proved by education ; but the means of improving 

 it necessarily partake of the niceness and obscurity 

 of itself, and all that we can say positively about 

 it is, that " the longer we are among the sweets, 

 they smell the more sweetly." 



There is no such educatability in mere tasting. 

 There is, in fact, rather the reverse ; and when the 

 Epicurean ransacks the three kingdoms of nature 

 in all their provinces, and even presses in putre- 

 faction itself, to give a flavour to his mess, he has 

 actually less animal pleasure in that mess than the 

 rustic has in a crust of wholesome brown bread, 

 or a potatoe nicely roasted in the turf ashes. His 



