200 FOOD AND FEEDING 



with the very similar threads which supply the nerves of 

 smell for mustard and pepper. That is why the smell and 

 taste of these pungent substances are so much alike, as 

 everybody must have noticed, a good sniff at a mustard- 

 pot producing annost the same irritating effects as an in- 

 cautious mouthful. As a rule we don't accurately distin- 

 guish, it is true, between these different regions of taste in 

 the mouth in ordinary life ; but that is because we usually 

 roll our food about instinctively, witliout paying much 

 attention to the particular part affected by it. Indeed, 

 when one is trying deliberate experiments in the subject, 

 in order to test the varying sensitiveness of the different 

 parts to diil'erent substances, it is necessary to keep the 

 tongue quite dry, in order to isolate the thing you are ex- 

 perimenting with, and prevent its spreading to all parts of 

 the mouth together. In actual practice this result is ob- 

 tained in a rather ludicrous manner — by blowing upon the 

 tongue, between each experiment, with a pair of bellows. 

 To such undignified expedients does the pursuit of science 

 lead the ardent modern psychologist. Those domestic 

 rivals of Dr. Forbes Winslow, the servants, who behold 

 the enthusiastic investigator alternately drying his tongue 

 in this ridiculous fashion, as if he were a blacksmith's fire, 

 and then squeezing out a single drop of essence of pepper, 

 vinegar, or beef-tea from a glass syringe upon the dry sur- 

 face, not unnaturally arrive at the conclusion that master 

 has gone stark mad, and that, in their private opinion, it's 

 the microscope and the skeleton as has done it. 



Above all things, we don't want to be flayed alive. So the 

 kinds of tastes discriminated by the tip of the tongue are the 

 pungent, like pepper, cayenne and mustard ; the astringent, 

 like borax and alum ; the alkaline, like soda and potash ; 

 the acid, like vinegar and green fruit ; and the saline, like 

 salt and ammonia. Almost all the bodies likely to give 



