ODORS AND LIFE. 
DescartTEs, Leibnitz, and all the great minds of the 
seventeenth century, believed that phenomena are such 
interdependent parts of one whole, that they require to 
be explained by each other, and consequently that a very 
close mutual connection should be maintained among the 
sciences. In their view, this was the condition of rapid 
advance and intelligent development. The experimental 
method, constant to systematic obstinacy in erecting so 
many barriers between the different sections of natural 
philosophy, has greatly hindered the completeness of what- 
ever knowledge we possess as the result of mutual interac- 
tion among all truths. At this day, such barriers are tend- 
ing to vanish of their own accord, and the science of man 
in his relations to external media begins to show the out- 
lines of its plan and harmony. We have before this 
sketched several of its chapters, and we will endeavor now 
to write another, on the subject of odors. 
MEE 
The seat of smell, or the olfactory sense, is the pituita- 
ry membrane lining the inner wall of the nostrils. It is a 
mucous surface, laid in irregular wrinkles, and receiving 
the spreading, slender, terminal filaments of a certain 
number of nerves. This membrane, like all other mucous 
ones, constantly secretes a fluid designed to lubricate it. 
