ON THE PROCESSES OF 



of tobacco, bitter apple, opium, cantharides, arsenic, and other poisons, 

 producing the most fatal effects, and altogether absorbed by the skin, are 

 decisive and incontrovertible proofs of such an action. It is hence the 

 bradypus, or sloth, supports itself without drinking, perhaps at any time, 

 and the ostrich and camel for very long periods, though the latter is also 

 possest of a natural reservoir. And hence the chief impletion of the hu- 

 man body, in many cases of abdominal dropsy : since persons labouring 

 under this disease have often been observed to fill with rapidity during the 

 most rigid abstinence from drinks of every kind. 



Along with the common odour of insensible perspiration, discharged 

 from the human surface, we often meet with other odours of a much 

 stronger kind, produced by particular diseases or particular modes of hfe, 

 and which are distinctly perceptible. Thus, the food of garlic yields a 

 perspiration possessing a garlic smell ; that of peas a leguminous smell ; 

 coarse oils and fat a rancid smell, which is the cause of this pecuhar 

 odour among the inhabitants of Greenland ; and acids a smell of acidity. 

 Among glass-blowers, from the large quantity of sea-salt that enters into 

 the materials of their manufacture, the sweat is sometimes so highly im- 

 pregnated, that the salt they employ, and imbibe by the skin and lungs, 

 has been seen to collect in cry^stals upon their faces. 



Hence, too, the various smells that are emitted from the surface of other 

 animals, and especially that of musk, which is one of the most common. 

 We trace this issuing generally from the bodies of many of the ape spe- 

 cies, and especially the simia Jacchus ; still more profusely from the 

 opossum, and occasionally from hedge-hogs, water-rats, hares, serpents, 

 and crocodiles. The odour of civet is the production of the civet-cat 

 alone, the viverra Zibetha^ and viverra Civetta of Linneus ; though we 

 meet with faint traces of it in some varieties of the domestic cat, the felis 

 Catta of the same writer. Genuine castor is, in like manner, a secretion 

 of the castor fiber ; but the sus Tajassu, and various other species of 

 swine, yield a smell that makes an approach towards it. 



Among insects, however, these odours are considerably more varied, 

 as well as considerably more pleasant ; for the musk-scent of the ceram- 

 bix moschatus^ the apis fragrans^ and the tipula moschifera^ is far more 

 delicate than that of the musk quadrupeds ; while the cerambix suaveo- 

 lens, and several species of the ichneumon, yield the sweetest perfume of 

 the rose ; and the petiolated sphex a balsamic ether highly fragrant, bat 

 peculiar to itself. Yet insects, like other classes of animals, furnish in- 

 stances of disagreeable, and even disgusting scents, as well as of those 

 that are fragrant. Thus, several species of the melitae breathe an es- 

 sence of garlic or onions ; the staphilinus brunipes has a stench intolerably 

 fetid, though combined with the perfume of spices ; while the caterpillars 

 of almost all the hymenoptera, and the larves of various other orderSf 

 emit an exhalation in many instances excessively pungent. The carabus 

 crepitans^ and sclopeta of Fabricius, pour forth a similar vapour, accom- 

 panied with a strange crackling sound. 



The odorous secretions belonging to the vegetable tribes are well 

 known to be still more variable ; sometimes poured forth from the leaves 

 of the plant, as in the bay, sweet-briar, and heliotrope ; sometimes from 

 the trunk, as in the pines and junipers ; but more generally from the coroL 

 It is from the minute family of the jungermannia, nearly related to the 

 mosses, and often scarcely visible to the eye, that we derive the chief 

 sense of that delightful fragrance perceptible after a shower, and especially 



