Scent. 



()127 



Now I believe it may be asserted with respect to almost if not quite 

 all the odours of this class, that tbey are apt to be retained for an 

 indefinite length of time in any suitably absorbent substance, e.g. a 

 piece of rough woollen material. A flannel shirt, in which a man has 

 strongly exerted himself during a long day's work, and which has 

 consequently absorbed a large quantity of sweat, will retain a peculiar 

 smell due to the axillary secretion, even after it has passed through 

 the washerwoman's hands; and still more of the odour, and more 

 powerful will be contracted, if the washing does not happen to keep 

 pace with the work ; so that two or three such garments hanging in 

 an apartment scent the atmosphere rather too sensibly to be agree- 

 able, and without sensible diminution of their perfuming power. But 

 the human " peculiar odour" is faint to human nostrils — except under 

 such circumstances of accumulation as those just adverted to — in 

 comparison with the odours of the same class in multitudes of the 

 lower animals. A woollen glove or over-shoe which has been welted 

 with a few drops of the urine of a fox or a male cat, will not only 

 retain the offensive smell for months or years, but will give it off most 

 freely at the expiration of those months or years under the agency of 

 either warmth or moisture. 



Now it must be borne in mind that only with scrupulous care and 

 attention to cleanliness carried out in repeated ablutions, can most 

 members of the human family prevent the lodgment of this peculiar 

 smell about their persons. In other creatures who do not and cannot 

 wash as mankind does, nor yet change their woollen garments, it is 

 inevitable that the eiSluvium in question should leave a permanent 

 odour. It therefore appears to me that in every case in which scent 

 is given off by an animal, it will in part be due to this source ; and, 

 in so far as it is due to this source, will it be of a nature corresponding 

 to that of the scent arising from musk, or, in other words, possessing 

 no substantiality, and so not depending upon either vapourous or 

 molecular matters. 



But it is very necessary to bear also in mind that in all animals, 

 except the denizens of the waters, a great amount of aqueous fluid is 

 almost always in course of transpiration from or through the pores of 

 the skin, and that in this transudation the aqueous matter is always 

 accompanied or impregnated with certain solid organic matters, to 

 the average amount possibly, in human beings, of one part in every 

 hundred ; and there is reason to believe that at leat a hundred 

 grains of azotised matter are excreted from the human skin daily 



