194 KISSES 



active effort to smell or explore by the olfactory sense. 

 The "nose-kiss" exists in races so far apart from one 

 another as the Maoris of New Zealand and the Esquimaux 

 of the Arctic regions. It is the habit of the Chinese, of 

 the Malays, and other Asiatic races. The only Europeans 

 who practise it are the Laplanders. The lip-kiss is dis- 

 tinguished by some authorities as " the salute by taste " 

 from nose-rubbing, which is " the salute by smell." The 

 word " kiss " is connected by Skeat with the Latin " gustus," 

 taste ; both words signify essentially " choice." But it 

 would be a mistake to regard the lip-kiss as merely an 

 effort to taste in the strict sense, since the act of inspira- 

 tion accompanying it brings the olfactory passages of the 

 nose into play. Lip-kissing is frequently mentioned in the 

 most ancient Hebrew books of the Bible, and it was also 

 the method of affectionate salutation among the Ancient 

 Greeks. Primarily both kinds of kissing were, there can 

 be no doubt, an act of exploration, discrimination, and 

 recognition dependent on the sense of smell. The more 

 primitive character of the kiss is retained by the lovers' 

 kiss, the mother's kissing and sniffing of her babe, and by 

 the kiss of salutation to a friend returning from or setting 

 out on a distant journey. Identification and memorising 

 by the sense of smell is the remote origin and explanation 

 of those kisses. The kissing of one another by grown-up 

 men as a salutation was abandoned in this country as late 

 as the eighteenth century. " 'Tis not the fashion here," 

 says a London gentleman to his country-bred friend in 

 Congreve's ' Way of the World.' But we have, most of 

 us, witnessed it abroad, and perhaps been unexpectedly 

 subjected to the process, as I once was by an affectionate 

 scientific colleague. Independently of the more ordinary 

 practice of kissing — there is the " ceremonial kiss " — the 

 kissing of hands, or of feet and toes, which still survives in 

 Court functions — whilst the Viennese and the Spaniards, 



