WILD ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY 



as pleasing and enticing means of calling together those 

 of the opposite sex, as some writers have supposed, finding 

 that in some instances the perfume is confined to the male 

 sex (of which the musk deer is a good example). Nor 

 can we determine that musk is the most abundant of all 

 scents to be found in the animal world. It certainly 

 appears so to us, but our powers of smelling are extremely 

 limited as compared with many other animals. The 

 sportsman in all countries becomes aware of his inferi- 

 ority in this respect sooner than other persons, for he well 

 knows the power of smell in animals — the extraordinary 

 distance they detect, by the nose alone, the presence of an 

 unwelcome visitor ; and this knowledge suggests the proba- 

 bility that we are in ignorance of, and have not the power 

 to discover, a multitude of different scents, odours, or 

 perfumes, enjoyed and perceived by many of the lower 

 animals. Take the dog, for instance. How readily he 

 finds the spot that has been touched by the hand or foot 

 of his master, and follows it up, and this in a crowded 

 street or city, where hundreds of feet have been trampling 

 over the same ground for hours before and after his 

 master had passed. The dog, however, must not be looked 

 upon as possessing the organ of smell developed to any- 

 thing like the perfection to be found in some other 

 animals. The delicacy of the olfactory nerves, the elabor- 

 ate and almost complicated arrangement of the nasal organs 

 met with in some animals, cannot fail to strike the com- 

 parative anatomist with wonder and astonishment, on 

 comparing these structures, and show him how insignificant 

 and feeble are our means of ascertaining the nature of the 

 objects by which we are surrounded, by the smell. Few 

 animals will taste that which is not good for them. Most 

 wild animals have the power of discriminating, by smelling, 

 that kind of food suited to their wants, and by an almost 



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