WILD ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY 
as pleasing and enticing means of calling together those 
of the opposite sex, as some writers have supposed, finding 
that in some instances the perfume is confined to the male 
sex (of which the musk deer is a good example). Nor 
can we determine that musk is the most abundant of all 
scents to be found in the animal world. It certainly 
appears so to us, but our powers of smelling are extremely 
limited as compared with many other animals. The 
sportsman in all countries becomes aware of his inferi- 
ority in this respect sooner than other persons, for he well 
knows the power of smell in animals — the extraordinary 
distance they detect, by the nose alone, the presence of an 
unwelcome visitor ; and this knowledge suggests the proba- 
bility that we are in ignorance of, and have not the power 
to discover, a multitude of different scents, odours, or 
perfumes, enjoyed and perceived by many of the lower 
animals. Take the dog, for instance. How readily he 
finds the spot that has been touched by the hand or foot 
of his master, and follows it up, and this in a crowded 
street or city, where hundreds of feet have been trampling 
over the same ground for hours before and after his 
master had passed. The dog, however, must not be looked 
upon as possessing the organ of smell developed to any- 
thing like the perfection to be found in some other 
animals. The delicacy of the olfactory nerves, the elabor- 
ate and almost complicated arrangement of the nasal organs 
met with in some animals, cannot fail to strike the com- 
parative anatomist with wonder and astonishment, on 
comparing these structures, and show him how insignificant 
and feeble are our means of ascertaining the nature of the 
objects by which we are surrounded, by the smell. Few 
animals will taste that which is not good for them. Most 
wild animals have the power of discriminating, by smelling, 
that kind of food suited to their wants, and by an almost 
