i88 SMELLS AND PERFUMES 



strong and unpleasant smell like that of iodoform. In 

 neither case is the nature of the odorous body known, 

 nor its use to the animal suggested. Smelts smell like 

 cucumbers : the green-bone fish and the mackerel smell 

 alike. One of the common earth-worms has a strong 

 aromatic smell, and the common snail, as well as the sea- 

 hare and one of the cuttlefishes {Eledone), smells like 

 musk. Musk itself is produced, as a scent attracting 

 the opposite sex, by several animals — musk-deer, musk- 

 sheep, musk-rats. I am not now attempting to enumerate 

 the well-recognised odours of animals such as are extracted 

 from them by man in order to " opsonise " himself, but 

 am pointing to the more obscure cases. There is not a 

 very great or marked variety in the odours of fishes ; 

 but reptiles with their dry, oily skins give off various 

 aromatic smells, none of which are valued by man. Toads 

 have distinct odours, and one kind {Pelobates fuscus, 

 or the heel-clawed toad), common in Europe, but not British, 

 is known locally as the garlic toad on account of its smell. 

 There are amongst carnivorous mammals various smells 

 allied to that of civet which are not so agreeable to man 

 as that substance ; for instance, the odour of the fox and 

 of the badger, and yet more celebrated, the terrible, awe- 

 inspiring smell of the fluid emitted in self-defence by the 

 skunk from a sac in the hinder part of the body. Horses, 

 cows, goats, sheep, and the giraffe have their distinctive 

 odours. Many of the herbivorous animals secrete a colour-- 

 less fluid from large glands opening on or near the feet, 

 and also from a gland in front of the eye (similar glands 

 occur in other strange positions), which has not a smell 

 familiar to man — that is to say, not one which has been 

 recognised and described — yet seems to be readily " smelt " 

 by the animals of its own kind. The bats — especially the 

 large frugivorous bats — have a very unpleasant, frowsy 

 ■mell. 



