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 



