62 SUPPLEMENT ON 



did not ourselves evidently experience the sensation of odours, 

 and if, under certain appreciable circumstances, we were not 

 deprived of the faculty of smell." 



Thus far M. Dumeril. The opinion which he advocates 

 originated with Baster, was adopted by Leckmann, and has 

 received the sanction of that very high authority the Baron 

 Cuvier himself. Notwithstanding, however, the ingenuity 

 and plausibility of this theory, Mr. Spence thinks with 

 apparent reason that the arguments against it are more 

 weighty than those in its favour. The correspondence 

 between that part of the head in insects called the nose, and 

 the same part in mammalia, is obvious. Moreover, the close 

 connection between the senses of smell and taste, and the 

 proximity of their organs in all animals where the organ of 

 the former can be clearly ascertained, affords a strong ana- 

 logy in favour of the seat of this sensation being in the head 

 of insects. The argument of Leckmann that because an in- 

 sect is smaller than what it feeds upon, it is a matter of indif- 

 ference whether it smells with its head or tail, is surely, to say 

 the least of it, somewhat absurd. A. flying insect, as Mr. 

 Spence well remarks, would be more readily directed to the 

 object of its pursuit by smelling with the former than the 

 latter, and a feeding insect would be better guided thus in 

 the choice of its food. Besides, to assert that smell is the 

 necessary concomitant of the apertures of respiration, is to 

 go beyond what our knowledge of insects will justify. Their 

 other organs of sense are so different in their structure, and 

 often in their mode of being impressed, that there may be 

 an analogous difference in the organ of which we are speak- 

 ing, and it is possible that insects may smell without inspiring 

 the air. Moreover the same judicious writer observes that 

 we do not smell with our mouths though we breathe vvith 

 them : thus proving that olfaction and respiration do not in- 

 variably accompany each other. 



