PERFUME OF AN EVENING PEIMEOSE 239 



appeared, only to disappear in an instant and 

 come no more. Such a case would represent our 

 condition with regard to even the strongest and 

 most familiar smells. Yet in spite of our inability 

 to recall them, we do distinctly make the effort; 

 and in the case of some strong odor which we have 

 recently inhaled the mind mocks us with this faint 

 shadow of a phantasm; and this vain, or almost 

 vain, effort of the mind, seems to show that odors 

 in some past period of our history were so much 

 more to us than they are now that they could be 

 vividly reproduced, and that this power has been 

 lost, or, at all events, is so weakened as to be of 

 no use. 



I find that Bain, who makes different and contra- 

 dictory statements on this subject in his work on 

 the Senses and the Intellect, has the following sen- 

 tence, with which I agree : ' ' By a great effort of 

 the mind, we may approach very near to the re- 

 covery of a smell that we have been extremely 

 familiar with, as, for example, the odor of coffee, 

 and if we were more dependent on ideas of smell, 

 we might succeed much better. ' ' A very big if, by 

 the way; but it is probable that some savages, and 

 some individuals among us that have a very acute 

 sense of smell, do succeed much better. This-^sense 

 being so much more to dogs than to man, it is not 

 strange that they remember smells rather than 

 sights, and can reproduce the sensation of smells, 

 as their twitching and sniffing noses when they 

 dream seem to show. 



