The Perfume of an Evening Primrose. 247 
This approach in ourselves to the recovery of a 
strong or familiar smell, this dim white patch, to 
speak in metaphor, the ghost of a phantasm of 
a smell, seems to have misled the philosophers into 
the idea that we can mentally reproduce odours. 
Bain, as I have said, contradicts himself, and there- 
fore, excepting in the sentence I have quoted, must 
be put down among those who are against me; and 
with him are McCosh, Bastian, Luys, Ferrier, and 
others who write on the brain and the mind. Do 
they copy from each other? It is very odd that 
they all tell us that we know very little about the 
sense of smell, and prove it by affirming that we 
can recall the sensations produced by odours, in 
some cases quoting the poet : 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 
I was seriously alarmed at the beginning of this 
inquiry by reading in McCosh, ‘‘ When the organs 
of taste and smell, supposed by Ferrier to be at the 
back of the head, are diseased or out of order, the 
reproduction of the corresponding sensations may 
be indistinct.’ So indistinct was the reproduction 
in my own case, even of the smell of coffee, that 
after reading this passage I began to fear that my 
own brain had misled me, and so, to satisfy myself 
on the point, I consulted others, friends and 
acquaintances, who all began trying to recall the 
sensations produced on them by the odours they 
were most familiar with. The result of their efforts 
has restored my peace of mind. With the exception 
