6134 



Scent. 



the creature emitting it, as upon tfie state of the atmosphere and the 

 conditions of what may be called its recipients — the objects or sub- 

 stances with which the creature in its movements comes into more or 

 less close contact. 



Every one must be aware how odours attach themselves, with dif- 

 fering degrees of permanency, to some objects or matters, and seem 

 to leave others almost or entirely untainted. Thus, paper kept in a 

 desk in which a grain or two of musk has been deposited contracts 

 the strong scent of musk so fixedly that it seems almost ineradicable. 

 The same may be said of any object on which the urine of a male cat 

 has been shed ; and a woollen ardcle will retain the strong, dis- 

 agreeable smell for years : a cake or a piece of bread will contract the 

 scent of the wood of the closet in which it has been kept, or of 

 a lemon, or tea, or pickles placed in its vicinity in any close 

 receptacle ; and instances of the same kind may be given to any ex- 

 tent. But the sugar kept in the same caddy with the tea contracts 

 no scent ; an egg side by side wdlh the lemon contracts, certainly 

 retains, no perceptible scent ; the clean, polished silver spoon con- 

 tracts no scent or flavour, even from musk, which will not give place 

 on exposure for a few moments to the free air. As far as one can 

 venture to generalise with any satisfactory degree of reasonableness, 

 it would seem that porous substances contract scents most readily 

 and retain them most strongly and permanently; but that mere 

 porosity alone is not sufficient ; there must be a degree of moisture 

 present in the porous substance as well. Very dry bread or cake con- 

 tracts much less of the closety scent than do the same substances 

 when fiesh and moist; hard biscuits of any sort, so long as they are 

 quite dry, — and few things contract moisture in small quantities more 

 speedily, — take up scarcely any such scent or flavour; sugar, which 

 has no alternative but dryness, none at all ; an egg, or ivory, or glass, 

 none. It may be said a glass scent-bottle will retain scent for years 

 after it has become empty ; that a wine or spirit bottle long retains 

 the scent and taste of the wine or spirit. No doubt it is so; but it 

 w^ould be hard to show, in the former case, that it w^as not a 

 residuum of the scent substance itself left in the interior of the bottle 

 by the evaporation of the spirit in which it was originally dissolved 

 or suspended, and that in the latter case, a very similar allegation 

 could not be made with truth. I certainly think it will be found that 

 all substances w^hich easily contract and readily retain foreign odours 

 are more or less porous, and more or less disposed to attract and 

 retain a sensible portion of the moisture of the atmosphere ; and that 



