6132 



Scent* 



But independently of such cases as these in which a dog winds" 

 a covey, or possibly a single bird only, from a distance of two or three 

 hundred yards, I have seen dogs continually, and my own dog fifty 

 times during the last season, on coming across the scent of a wounded 

 bird, which was not the least disabled for running and had got 

 a great start while I was loading, set off at great speed ; oftentimes 

 never checking for a moment, and never appearing to make the 

 slightest effort after the scent; and invariably go as direct to 

 the bird (which he had never even seen in some cases) as if he was 

 running " at gaze " all the time ; while at other times, and not rarely, 

 he had to work every foot of the track, and it was only with pains 

 and patience and at a slow pace that he brought his quest to a suc- 

 cessful issue. In the former case, the scent was not only " strong," 

 but it was a " good scenting day ; " that is, the atmosphere was in the 

 most favorable condition for holding the scent suspended : in the 

 latter case, just the reverse. 



And how much the state of the atmosphere has to do with it 

 any one may easily observe for himself by contrasting his per- 

 ception of the odour from a bean field or clover field in blossom in 

 the middle of a fine, dry, sunny day, and in the evening of the same 

 day not long after sunset when the atmosphere is more than compara- 

 tively moist. The same, too, of a dunghill or " middenstead" at dif- 

 ferent times : to-day you may pass it with scarcely any nasal intir 

 mation of its presence ; to-morrow your olfactory nerves will give 

 you ample testimony of the abundance of ammonia evolved.* The 

 hygrometer, would, if appealed to, doubtless give a very distinct and 

 intelligible " Because" to your Why." 



Besides, what certainly ought not to be, but often is overlooked, in 

 speaking on the subject of scent, the state of the atmosphere almost 

 certainly, I believe unquestionably, has an influence of another kind 

 in addition to that just named, upon if not the perceptibleness yet 

 the perception of scent ; 1 mean that which it exercises upon 

 the organs engaged in the detection or recognition of scent. Thus, 

 in speaking of what may be called the mechanism of smell, we find 



* I Lave frrqueiitly observed this very sensible increase of the " perfume'' from 

 a dung-hill on a frosty evening, though frusl is generally held to destroy scent. But the 

 following morning has usually in such cases explained the matter, by displayino^ a 

 copious deposition of hoar frost. In what is called a black frost the most offensive 

 cotnpost heap does not greatly offend the nostril: no wonder then that there is very 

 slight testimony, even if any, afforded by scent in very frosty weather, as to the path 

 of any gi^en aninjal. 



