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Sense of smell   /sɛns əv smɛl/   Listen
Sense of smell

noun
1.
The faculty that enables us to distinguish scents.  Synonyms: olfaction, olfactory modality, smell.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sense of smell" Quotes from Famous Books



... or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the shark, crow, owl, jackal, hyena, etc., viz. by their abnormally developed sense of smell. My own and other people's experience has led me to believe that when a person is about to die, some kind of phantom, maybe, a spirit whose special function it is to be present on such occasions, is in close proximity to the sick or injured one, waiting ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... population had long since been in bed. Silence and darkness mercilessly defied me to discover anything. For a while I waited, encouraging the dog to circle round me and exercise his sense of smell. Any suspicious person or object he would have certainly discovered. Nothing—not even the fallen stick of the rocket—rewarded our patience. Determined to leave nothing untried, I groped, rather than found, my way to the village ale house, and succeeded at last in rousing the landlord. ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... depressed itself ninety degrees, and brought into view the smiling features of that smile-making gentleman from Paducah—Mr. Irvin S. Cobb. Machine, rider and passenger stopped for breath and I made bold to ask the intrepid humourist if he suffered from a too keen sense of smell or a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... children, he was enraged. He at once took his magic cane, and put on his magic boots and cap. When the boys heard the giant coming after them, they went down into a big hole they had dug. There they hid. But the giant had a keen sense of smell, and he walked around and around, looking for them. At last he became tired; he leaned against a tree and fell asleep. Pitong peeped through a small opening from under the ground. When he saw that the giant was asleep, he called out ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... naturally shy, avoiding the presence of man; they have a keen sense of smell, and hence man has difficulty in approaching a herd, except from the leeward side. They have little intelligence, are sluggish and timid, rarely attacking man or beast, except when wounded or in self-defense. In migrating they travel in large herds, but when feeding they separate ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... inspect my well-filled barns. These are the mere outsides of things, and do not enter into the real balance-sheet of my life. We can no more estimate the success of a life by methods like these than we can adjudge an oil-painting by the sense of smell. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... across, are known to be the centres for smell, hearing, and sight, that for sight lying furthest back. Damage to one of these areas will make the individual more or less completely blind, or deaf, or deprived of the sense of smell, as ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... excursions to Nature. They have helped to clothe me with health, if not with humility; they have helped sharpen and attune all my senses; they have kept my eyes in such good trim that they have not failed me for one moment during all the seventy-five years I have had them; they have made my sense of smell so keen that I have much pleasure in the wild, open-air perfumes, especially in the spring—the delicate breath of the blooming elms and maples and willows, the breath of the woods, of the pastures, of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... many opportunities I have enjoyed of seeing his minute experiments, I remember but one instance in which I noticed any remarkable difference in the acuteness of his bodily faculties, either of his hearing, his sight, or of his sense of smell, from those of other persons who possessed them in a good degree. [This was at Mr. South's observatory, and the object was, the dots on the declination circle of his equatorial; but, in this instance, Dr. Wollaston did not attempt to TEACH ME ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... be frightened, to the ruin of the extensive fishery that has existed there for more than two hundred years. Its sight, touch and taste are also well developed but it has no olfactory nerve and is apparently without the sense of smell. The creature has qualities that we should hardly expect. It has been tamed and almost domesticated. The enterprising Barnum exhibited in New York a beluga which drew a boat about in his aquarium. At Boston another beluga from the St. Lawrence drew about a floating car carrying ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... Indian— Sense of smell Teepees Head-dresses Telegram of good luck Meaning of Eagle feathers War bonnet Ability to foretell storms Games Tests of eyes Well Drum Smoke signs Trail signs ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had exhausted ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... N. odor, smell, odorament|, scent, effluvium; emanation, exhalation; fume, essence, trail, nidor|, redolence. sense of smell; scent; act of smelling &c. v.; olfaction, olfactories[obs3]. [pleasant odor] fragrance &c. 400. odorant. [animal with acute sense of smell] bloodhound, hound. [smell detected by a hound] spoor. V. have an odor &c. n.; smell, smell of, smell strong of; exhale; give out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... that it should have sounded and passed away like a voice fixed on the ear by that impress, whereby it might be recalled, as if it sounded, when it no longer sounded; or as a smell while it passes and evaporates into air affects the sense of smell, whence it conveys into the memory an image of itself, which remembering, we renew, or as meat, which verily in the belly hath now no taste, and yet in the memory still in a manner tasteth; or as any thing which the body by touch perceiveth, and which ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... bitch (a Bulldog species) of Denmark and a Mastiff (Shepherd's Dog) of the Pyrenees. The descendants of the crossing, who have inherited from the Danish dog its extraordinary size and bodily strength, and from the Pyrenean Mastiff the intelligence, the exquisite sense of smell, and, at the same time, the faithfulness and sagacity which characterise them, have acquired in the space of five centuries so glorious a notoriety throughout Europe that they well merit the name of a ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... established fact that some animals can count, and that they have the faculty of close observation and keen discrimination. They learn to count quickly, but they do not fully appreciate the value of numerical rotation. Most of the arithmetical feats of trained animals are hoaxes regulated by their sense of smell, sight, touch and taste. But no one doubts their ability to count. I have known a monkey that could count to five. He played with a number of marbles, and I would ask for two marbles, one marble, four marbles, as the case might be, and he would ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... buffalo seems to demand at our hands a short episode from the narrative of Kit Carson's life. This animal has several traits of character peculiarly his own. If alarmed, he starts off almost instantly and always runs against the wind, his sense of smell appearing to be better than his eyesight. What is a most remarkable fact, a herd of buffalo, when grazing, always post and maintain a line of sentinels to warn the main body of the approach of danger. When a strange object comes within sight ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Then, by the tightening of his hand, Valensolle knew he was making an effort. Presently a stone was raised, and through the opening a trembling gleam of twilight met the eyes of the young men, and a fragrant aromatic odor came to comfort their sense of smell after the mephitic atmosphere of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... delay the basket was unpacked, and Poppy's sense of smell was amply justified. Four meat patties, some hard-boiled eggs and slices of bread and butter, cakes, biscuits, milk, gooseberries, and apples, made a lunch fit for four queens. And the children fairly squealed with delight as they unrolled ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... a sort of feeling. The nerves of smell are so sensitive that they can discover things in the air which we cannot taste or see. An Indian uses his sense of smell to tell him whether things are good to eat or not. He knows that things which have a pleasant smell are likely to be good for him and not likely ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... to have a very keen sense of hearing, their sense of smell is very strong. And where do you think it lies? In the same little feelers with which they talk to each other. The first ant's house seen in the round picture has been cut in two to show you how wonderfully ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous

... Tyndall, but had no clear answer, and have now written to him again about odours. (468/1. Dr. Ogle's work on the Sense of Smell ("Medico-Chirurgical Trans." LIII., page 268) is referred to in the "Expression of the Emotions," page 256.) I write now to ask you to be so kind (if there is no objection) to tell me the circumstances under which you saw a man arrested for murder. (468/2. Given in the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... are in the room, and one of them is rather suspicious of this strange young prince. He sniffs cautiously at his legs, for though his eyes deceive him, his sense of smell ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... first of all. There would be bottles of beer on the table; also one of those odd bottles of Norwegian make, filled with whisky. And when Lavender went with wonder into this small room, when he smelt the fragrant peat-smoke—and every one knows how powerful the sense of smell is in recalling bygone associations—when he saw the smoking salmon and the bottled beer and the whisky, and when he suddenly found Mairi coming into the room and saying to him, in her sweet Highland fashion, "And are you ferry well, sir?"—would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... found often in large herds on the mountain heights in Ceylon, at an elevation of some thousand feet above the sea. With regard to their sight, that is supposed to be somewhat circumscribed, and they depend for their safety on their acute sense of smell and hearing. The sounds they utter are very remarkable, and by them they seem to be able to communicate with each other. That of warning to the herd is a deep hollow ringing sound, like that of an empty ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the Grand Master of the Hunt and hounds. On the third floor, beneath the high sloping roof, were a few garrets and several large lofts filled with the straw destined for the dog-kennels. The mingled odours of hounds and straw displeased Wilhelmine's acute sense of smell, and one of her first commands upon entering her new abode was that hounds and straw should be removed instantly. She declared that therefrom the whole house was infested with fleas, and when the Duke, wishful to propitiate ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... flavor or taste which ripened cream-butter possesses is due, in large part, to the formation of certain decomposition products formed by various bacteria. Aroma is a quality often confounded with flavor, but this is produced by volatile products only, which appeal to the sense of smell rather than taste. Generally a good flavor is accompanied by a desirable aroma, but the origin of the two qualities is not necessarily dependent on the same organisms. The quality of flavor and aroma in butter is, of course, also affected by other conditions, as, for instance, the presence ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... many kinds of beauty: a beauty in the sciences—geometry is beautiful; a beauty in morals—it cannot be denied that the death of Socrates was beautiful; a beauty in the animal kingdom—the beauty of the dog consists in his sense of smell. A pig could not be beautiful, having regard to his dirty habits; no more could a serpent, for it awakens in us ideas of vileness. The flowers, the butterflies, the birds may be beautiful. Finally, the first condition ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars that stood ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... nuisances has been already somewhat covered. Legislation extending the police power and declaring new forms or uses of property to be a nuisance is, of course, rapidly increasing in all States. The common-law nuisance was usually a nuisance to the sense of smell or a danger to life, as, for instance, an unsanitary building or drain. Noise, that is to say, extreme noise, might also be a nuisance, and in England the interference with a man's right to light and air. Legislation is now eagerly desired in many ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... deferential waiter brought brandy and curacoa in long thin glasses. But Mr. Vidal shook his head. He hadn't had a drink, he said, for twenty years. He found it affected his hearing. Coffee, too, he refused. It affected, so it seemed, his sense of smell. He sat beside us, ill at ease, and anxious, as I could see, to get back to his second daughter and her schoolmistresses. Mr. Sims, who is geniality itself in his heart, but has no great powers in ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... She was holding her nose in the air and sniffing; seated to windward of the smoker, and out of the pigtail-poisoned air, her delicate sense of smell perceived ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... when one buys the natural violet perfumery he is paying at the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the odoriferous oil it contains; the rest is mere water and alcohol. But you would not want the pure undiluted oil if you could get it, for it is unendurable. A single whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a time just as a loud noise ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... cause of start and whine is not anything seen. There is no anatomical reason for supposing a dog to possess exceptional powers of vision. But a dog's organs of scent proclaim a faculty immeasurably superior to the sense of smell in man. The old universal belief in the superhuman perceptivities of the creature was a belief justified by fact; but the perceptivities are not visual. Were the howl of a dog really—as once supposed—an ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... Finally take some light odor, and hold it before the nostrils, abstracting the attention from the sense of smell, by hearing or seeing, etc., until by practice you can pass through the foulest odor without inconvenience ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush

... best of all because you could fake the answers and cram for exams more easily. Math. and history require facts. There was one perfectly thrilling experience with fish. You know fish distinguish colours, one from the other, and are guided by colour sense rather than a sense of smell. We had red sticks and green sticks and blue sticks in a tank of fish, and for days we put the fish food on the green sticks and the fish would swim right over to get it, and then we put it on the red sticks and they still swam over to the green sticks ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... bread and corn, but we should then have been worse off than ever. And in the end the dogs saved us by an occasional capture—an armadillo surprised in the open and seized before it could bury itself in the soil, or an iguana, opossum, or labba, traced by means of their keen sense of smell to its hiding-place. Then Nuflo would rejoice and feast, rewarding them with the skin, bones, and entrails. But at length one of the dogs fell lame, and Nuflo, who was very hungry, made its lameness an excuse for dispatching it, which he did apparently without compunction, notwithstanding ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... Hill into the Forum, each lined with massive blocks of red volcanic stone. For a long time these vaults have been used as cellars under a row of tall squalid-looking houses built over them between the Via di Marforio and the Vicolo del Ghettarello; and the sense of smell gives convincing proof that where prisoners of state used to be confined, provisions of wine, cheese, and oil have been stored. The prison has recently passed into the possession of the British and American Archaeological Society of Rome, which pays a certain ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... despair, as she admired the luxurious arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and the hangings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury affected a certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated in the warm air flattered the sense of smell without offending it. The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a view, through plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted with evergreen trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of it was ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... all traces of our former journey were lost. As yet, we had not been so long in London but that I had reason to think I should recognise the principal turnings, besides various objects on the road. I had been asleep during part of the journey, it is true; but I hoped that my acute sense of smell would come to my help when ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland

... emotional power St. Augustin attributed to ecclesiastical music, and of what importance he thought it, may be seen in the tenth book of the Confessions: he is there examining himself under the heads of the senses, and after the sense of smell, his chapter on the sense of ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... morning before fatigue at last overmastered every sensation, and the three fell into an unbroken sleep, which lasted until the sun was high in the sky. When they awoke, their sense of smell was the first sense to be tickled. Fragrant odors of boiling coffee were floating into the tent. One after another they scrambled up, threw on their coats, and hurried out to find their guide kneeling by the camp-fire on the very spot from which ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... altogether - to suppose that there is any natural antagonism between putrefaction and health. They know better than that, in the Common Council. You may talk about Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man through his sense of smell, when he draws near to something dangerous; but, that won't go down in the City. Nature very often don't mean anything. Mrs. Quickly says that prunes are ill for a green wound; but whosoever says that putrid animal substances are ill for a green wound, or for robust vigour, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... might suggest a not overkeen sense of smell, and there appears no reason to believe that this sense is particularly well developed. However, the turbinals are very complex. The vibrissae are long and sensitive, and may indicate a special development of the sense ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... made her approach in a most approved fashion, creeping through some low bushes with the utmost caution. She was even careful to advance against the wind in case Stephanos should have an unusually acute sense of smell. Phillips and Kalliope watched her from a hiding-place near the village. When she got within twenty yards of the old man, he rose to his feet, laid his hand on his heart and bowed to the Queen with dignified courtesy. If he felt any surprise at seeing the Queen crawling along the ground ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... did not lose his presence of mind; he called him by name and held out a piece of the cake, when the great animal uttered a loud grunt, stopped short, and extended his trunk, not to grasp the tempting offering, but to bring to bear his wonderful sense of smell before he ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... waking, breathing hard,—all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and a big sow waddling along with her huge paunch. Notwithstanding the unspeakable defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all their food, they seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell. What ridiculous-looking animals! Swift himself could not have imagined anything nastier than what they practise by the mere impulse of natural genius. Yet the Shakers keep their pigs very clean, and with great advantage. The legion of devils in the herd of swine,—what a scene ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... years; but in scrutinising the fleeting associations called up by the various words, I traced two mental visual images (an alembic and a particular arrangement of tables and light), and one mental sense of smell (chlorine gas) to that very laboratory. I recognised that these images appeared familiar to me, but I had not thought of their origin. No doubt if some strange conjunction of circumstances had suddenly recalled those three associations at the same time, with perhaps two or three other ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... trees, but occasionally in large flocks. The great expanse and power of his wings enables the king vulture to soar to a prodigious height, whence he can survey with his piercing sight a wide extent of his domain; possibly also his exquisite sense of smell enables him to detect the odour of the putrefying carcass which rises through ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... rocking of the car disturbed them, growling in their dreams. In their helplessness to cope with this outrage, they turned to these dumb animals as a welcome ally. Under the guidance of their master they were an aid whose value he well understood. Their sense of smell was more reliable than the sense of seeing in man. You can believe the dog when you doubt your own eyes. His opinion is ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... was, suggestive to the sense of smell, of a cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed and lighted lamps, ready for carriage service. They made a ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... were rude and brutal, and around him was an atmosphere of frying fish and boiling cabbage. The cabbage was perhaps the crowning evil; for while he found it possible to force his ear and eye to be deaf and blind to the disagreeable, he had no amount of will that could conquer the sense of smell. There seemed to be little, he thought, with some contempt for his expectations, to reward his quest or maintain his theory that every one had at least one story to tell. It was not necessarily one's own story, he had said, but lives the most barren ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... stopped, sniffing to identify the odor that had rapped at his heedless nostrils for an hour. Disbelieving the testimony of his sense of smell he scanned the woods for visual evidence, for the first time taking in the quiet beauty of the scene. Finding the objects for which he searched he exclaimed aloud in ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... himself no instinctive repugnance to bad odours whether they were the odours of the outdoor world, such as those of dung or tar, or the odours of his own person among which he had made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the end that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a certain stale fishy stink like that of long-standing urine; and whenever it was possible he subjected himself to this unpleasant odour. To mortify the taste he practised strict habits at table, observed ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... combinations of tones—pleasant words and sweet songs. If you indulge in loud talking, in boisterous and untimely laughter, or in profane or vulgar language, or sing out of tune, you violate its rights and offend good manners. The sense of smell requires pleasant odors for its enjoyment. Fragrance is its proper element. To bring the fetid odor of unwashed feet or filthy garments, or the stench of bad tobacco or worse whisky, or the offensive scent of onions or garlics ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... become. Recent researches have shown that a drug like mercaptan may be used to test the limit of olfactory appreciation. We have thus come to know that the capacity to perceive an odor is more delicate than our ability to recognize light. Probably it is an inconceivable delicacy of the sense of smell more than anything else which enables animals to find their way in the manner which seems to us so utterly mysterious. Yet, even in human beings, and not alone in a fortunate convalescence, do we see startling illustrations of the possibilities of this form of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... them, that when in his botanical expeditions he came across a single flower of its kind, he could never bring himself to pluck it. His sight, though not good for distant objects, was of the very finest for things held close; his sense of smell was so acute and subtle that, according to a good witness, he might have classified plants by odours, if language furnished as many names as nature supplies varieties of fragrance.[118] He insisted in all botanising and other walking excursions on going bareheaded, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... freedom from tendencies to disease, agility, and inherent capacity for manual and digital skill. It may also have certain requirements as to eyesight, hearing, reaction time, muscular co-ordination, sense of touch, and even, in some particular places, sense of smell and sense of taste. Moral requirements may vary from those of a hired gunman to those of a Y.M.C.A. secretary ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... with hoarseness? Soreness of the throat? Difficulty in breathing? Have you pain in the head between and above the eyes? A sense of fulness in the head? Are the passages of the nose stopped up? Is your breath foul? Have you lost all sense of smell? Are you troubled with hawking? Spitting? Weak, inflamed eyes? Dullness or dizziness of the head? Dryness or heat of the nose? Is your voice harsh or rough? Have you any difficulty in talking? Have you an excessive secretion of mucus or matter in the nasal passages, which must either be ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various

... said Frank. "But there is one thing certain: they must be able to see a little, or else their sense of smell or hearing is very acute for it is very difficult to get a shot at them, even in the day-time. That one in our museum led me a chase of half a day before I shot him, and I had ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... as a mere barricade to be ruthlessly overturned. How is she apprised that the cocoon, which has undergone no outward change, contains a dead and not a live grub? It is certainly not by sight. Can it be by sense of smell? I am always a little suspicious of that sense of smell of which we do not know the seat and which we introduce on the slightest provocation as a convenient explanation of that which ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... narrowest auditory passages, and in those that are furnished with the widest, or in those with hairy ears and those with smooth ones? For we, even, hear differently when we partially stop up the ears, from what we do when we use them naturally. The sense of smell also varies according to differences in 51 animals, since even our sense of smell is affected when we have taken cold and the phlegm is too abundant, and also when parts around our head are flooded with too much blood, ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... sense of taste, which is limited to the mouth and the parts about it. This sense is in a way related to that of touch, for the reason that it depends on the contact of our body with material things. Third is the sense of smell, so closely related to that of taste that it is difficult to draw the line between the two. Yet through the apparatus of the nose we can perceive the microscopically small parts of matter borne to us through the air, which could not be appreciated by the nerves of the mouth. Fourth ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... the office were lined with rows and tiers of small mirrors; receivers and mouthpieces connected him with everything. Sights, sounds, and even smells of the various factories were available to him—smells when his sense of smell might be necessary for the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... the Dog; the Sense of Smell; Intelligence; Moral Qualities; Dog-carts; Cropping; Tailing; ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... said, "has hardly got back his sense of smell yet. The stink of tar, mixed with fishy odours, will be vivid in my remembrance for the rest of ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... fever raged during seven weeks; for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed; and, consequently, that her ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... just what I'm trying to say," Jake cried. "Look, why do we have any sense of smell at all? Because we have tiny olfactory nerve endings buried in the mucous membrane of our noses and throats. But we have always had the virus living there, too, colds or no colds, throughout our entire lifetime. ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... Fields where the shades of the blest dwelt in bliss without alloy. An enchanting greenness made the sweet-smelling groves as pleasant to the eye as they were to the sense of smell. Sunlit, yet never parched with torrid heat, everywhere their verdure charmed the delighted eye, and all things conspired to make the shades of the good and wise, who were privileged to dwell in these ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... sextons, when the skin should become sufficiently decomposed. Throughout all the countries that I had traversed, these birds were in enormous numbers. The question has been frequently discussed whether the vulture is directed to his prey by the sense of smell, or by keenness of vision; I have paid much attention to their habits, and, although there can be no question that their power of scent is great, I feel convinced that all birds of prey are attracted to ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... similar manner Gabirol proves that the sense of smell has four qualities, anger, favor, envy, wide-awakeness; the sense of taste, the four qualities, joy, sorrow, regret, calmness; while liberality, niggardliness, courage and cowardice are related to the sense ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... greatly surprised that no one of the writers on the Filipinos has spoken of this remarkable fact, which springs from their exquisite sense of smell. It is so great that a servant can tell his master's shirt, after it is cleaned and ironed, even though it lies with ten or twelve other shirts resembling it and belonging to other persons, by simply smelling them. They also assert that if a man be near a woman for whom he experiences a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... about to fade away, have a sickly and disagreeable odor. This is due to the admixture of the wrong or discordant tones. Thus, heliotrope, vanilla, orange blossom and almond blend together; citron, lemon, vervain and orange peel belong together, but they produce a stronger impression on the sense of smell, and are of a higher octave; and so with a still higher class, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... nocturnal animal, must be able to distinguish the various qualities of trees by the senses of smell and touch, as in the darkness of a forest during night it would be impossible to distinguish the leaves. There are few creatures who possess so delicate a sense of smell; wild elephants will wind an enemy at a distance of a thousand yards, or even more, should the breeze be favourable. The nerves of the trunk are peculiarly sensitive, and although the skin is thick, the smallest substance can be discovered, and picked up by the tiny proboscis ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... should concentrate on the sense of smell," said Skippy thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact the experiment ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... unconscious devices for avoiding these ambiguities: moreover, inconveniences to which we are born are very lightly taken: many persons have grown up to manhood blind of one eye without being aware of their disability; and others who have no sense of smell or who cannot hear high sounds do not miss the sense that they lack; and so I think it may be ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... children, and had only built the little bread house in order to lure them in. When anyone came into her power she killed, cooked, and ate him, and held a regular feast-day for the occasion. Now witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but, like beasts, they have a keen sense of smell, and know when human beings pass by. When Hansel and Grettel fell into her hands she laughed maliciously, and said jeeringly: "I've got them now; they sha'n't escape me." Early in the morning, before the children were awake, she rose up, and when she ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling are the porters of the mind. One or another of these bring to the mind every thought that it receives. We obtain thoughts of odor only by the sense of smell; of flavor only by the taste; of color by the eye alone. In these matters we have no intuition. We brought no ideas into the world with us. In all these things we are creatures of education. Simple or single ideas, like simple words, represent simple thoughts or realities, and compound ideas ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... necks as I could, quietly inhale their odours, and talk all the time. Not every woman smelt nice to me, and when they did, it was not patchouli, for I got patchouli, which I liked, and perfumed myself with it. This delicate sense of smell of a woman I have had throughout life, it was ravishing to me afterwards, when I embraced the naked body of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... so dry as to lose its transparency; as when a tremulous motion of it can be seen over corn fields in a hot summer's day; or when a dry mist, or want of transparency of the air, is visible in very hot weather; the sense of smell is at the same time imperfect from the dryness of the membrane, beneath which ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... am buried in my old easy-chair, my feet on the fender before a blazing fire, my ear soothed by the singing of the coffee-pot, which seems to gossip with my fire-irons, the sense of smell gently excited by the aroma of the Arabian bean, and my eyes shaded by my cap pulled down over them, it often seems as if each cloud of the fragrant steam took a distinct form. As in the mirages of the desert, in each as it rises, I see ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... to be noticed in this connection that many animals are gifted with a wonderful sensibility of the senses,—the action of which is sometimes mistaken not only for the action of instinct, but for that of reason also. The acuteness of the sense of smell in the dog, which enables him to trace the steps of his master for miles through crowded streets by the infinitesimal odor which his footsteps left upon the pavement, is quite beyond our conception. Equally incomprehensible to us are the keenness of sight and wide range ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... which they had left England the painting of the ship had been only lately finished, and this circumstance confined Napoleon, whose sense of smell was very acute, to his room for two days. They were now, in the beginning of October, driven into the Gulf of Guinea, where they met a French vessel bound for the Isle of Bourbon. They spoke with the captain, who expressed his surprise and regret when he learnt that Napoleon was on board. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Some queer sixth sense pulled me up in mid-stride. I had heard nothing, I had seen nothing; but for all that I knew that a strange and obtrusive presence was very close to me. The New Guinea native can at times tell the presence of an enemy simply by his sense of smell, and I suppose I've lived so long amongst them that I have acquired something of this kind. Be this as it may, I was aware of the other man's proximity long before my faculties went into action and confirmed me ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... consciousness. And when I tore my eyes away from the Judge's stare, I saw that the dog was staring, too,—was staring, was drawing back his black lips, exposing his yellow teeth. Every hair on his back was erect, his nostrils were distended as if he were relying upon his sense of smell to determine the nature of what he saw. Could there be any doubt that he, living, and his master, dead, still saw something—something which, because it was behind ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... limited and general convulsions were often produced by disease in the cortex of the so-called motor convolutions. The sense of smell has been localized by Munk in the gyri hippocampi, while the center of hearing has been demonstrated to be in the temporal lobes. The center for the muscles of the face and tongue is in the inferior part of the central convolution; that for the arm, in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... of the human body, its comparative slowness of foot; the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or for defence; the same want of power for similar purposes in the hands and fingers; the bluntness of the sense of smell, so as to render it useless for the detection of prey which is concealed;—all these are features which stand in fixed and harmonious relation to the mental powers of man. But, apart from these, they would place him at an immense disadvantage ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... are all right for Orientals; and what is your Muscovite but an Oriental, in all essentials of hygiene? But they play the deuce with a European who has grown up in a country where people still indulge in a sense of smell." ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout—whether it be water or whether ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... threads, for she is not equipped for that work, but some odorous emanation, for instance some formic scent, which would allow her to guide herself by means of the olfactory sense? This view is pretty generally accepted. The Ants, people say, are guided by the sense of smell; and this sense of smell appears to have its seat in the antennae, which we see in continual palpitation. It is doubtless very reprehensible, but I must admit that the theory does not inspire me with overwhelming ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... of their burros died mysteriously, and Bill, puzzled, said he believed that it had lost its sense of smell and eaten something poisonous. On the day following the other died, apparently from the same complaint. The veteran miner grieved ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... never harbouring malice, he used also to support his parents and others that depended upon him. One day, searching for animals even with perseverance and care, he found none. At last he saw a beast of prey whose sense of smell supplied the defect of his eyes, employed in drinking water. Although he had never seen such an animal before, still he slew it immediately. After the slaughter of that blind beast, a floral shower fell from the skies (upon the head of the hunter). A celestial ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... brass badge hanging on his back like the label on a box of sardines. He wears a sheepskin; but it is notorious that after ten years' wear the sheepskin loses its odour, besides which it is winter, so that your sense of smell has really nothing to fear. The one thing necessary is to keep your legs to yourself, or at all events not to obtrude them beneath the perch of the driver, or you will run the chance of having your foot crushed by that gentleman's ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... of the audience assembled in it- -amounting that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds. Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building was ventilated to perfection. My sense of smell, without being particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... True that the damned are fried or boiled? Was the Earth's axis greased or oiled? Who cleaned the moon when it was soiled? How baldness might be cured or foiled? How heal diseased potatoes? Did spirits have the sense of smell? 490 Where would departed spinsters dwell? If the late Zenas Smith were well? If Earth were solid or a shell? Were spirits fond of Doctor Fell? Did the bull toll Cock-Robin's knell? What remedy would bugs expel? If Paine's invention ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... of it; and so it ever is because in simple and allowable things our natural instincts keep us from deviating from the strict line of duty. The tiger, whose nature teaches him to delight in shedding blood, needs but the sense of smell to show him when his prey is within his reach, and by following this instinct he is enabled to measure the leap necessary to permit him to spring on his victim; but man, on the contrary, loathes the idea of blood—it is not alone that the laws of social ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... nature, endowed with rare gifts which he persistently abused. Pure physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... and we are a very old race. In the beginning we did not live in caves but there came a long period of time, for thousands of years, when the climate on our world was so violent that we were forced to live in the caves. It was completely dark there but our sense of smell became very acute, together with sufficient sensitivity to temperature changes that we could detect objects in our immediate vicinity. There were subterranean plants in the caves and food ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin

... the St. Bernard dog is taught to perform, have made them the blessings of the snow-covered regions in which they dwell; their sense of smell is very acute, their large, full, eye, is very expressive, and their intelligence has saved many persons from death, when overtaken by cold on the Alpine passes. One of these noble creatures wore a medal, in commemoration of his having preserved twenty-two lives, and ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... over a far horizon, you must with us have estimated as very slight the chances of happening on the exact pin point where the kudu at that moment happened to be feeding. For the beast is shy, it inhabits the densest, closest mountain cover, it possesses the keen eyesight and sense of smell of the bush-dwelling deer and antelope, and more than the average sense of hearing. There are very few of him. But the chief discouragement is that arising from his roaming tendencies. Other rare animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter finds tracks, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... chunks of pork stored away in the locker," returned Lester. "If we catch sight of one swimming around, we'll throw over some small pieces. Their sense of smell is wonderful, and they'll get on the job right away. The shark will follow us for more, and just when he thinks he's found a regular meal, we'll heave over the big piece attached to the hook. He'll nab it in a hurry, and then ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... side curve. The maid had seen him there and had held back dinner until he should awaken. Perhaps Jane's entrance roused him; or, perhaps it was the odor of the sachet powder wherewith her garments were liberally scented, for he had a singularly delicate sense of smell. He lifted his head and, after the manner of aged and confirmed cat-nappers, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... away from that place there was a dense forest. In that forest was living a mighty hero who was quite blind. The only way by which he could get himself food was this: whenever he perceived by the sense of smell that any animal was running past him, whether a hare, or a fox, or a bear, he immediately started in chase of it, caught it—and dinner was ready for him. The hero was exceedingly swift-footed, and there was not a single wild beast which could run away from him. Well, one day it fell out ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... suddenly approaching it. At three months the child begins to recognize colors; the first recognized are yellow, red, pure white, gray, and black. But the faculty of distinguishing between colors is not perfected till the third year. The mother is recognized about the third month. Hearing and a sense of smell develop rapidly after birth; loud noises in its vicinity will cause a child to start during the first day after birth. By the time the child has reached three months of age it shows signs of having a mind of its own, and is capable of exercising thought. It grasps for objects, and indicates ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... went down to the kitchen. It was another climate there. A great fire was burning, that it quite cheered Ellen's heart to look at; and the air seemed to be full of coffee and buckwheat cakes; Ellen almost thought she should get enough breakfast by the sense of smell. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... dependent alone upon his sense of smell. Vision and hearing had been brought to a marvelous state of development by the necessities of his early life, where survival itself depended almost daily upon the exercise of the keenest vigilance and the constant use ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Beavers until you were nearly addled, and then he would persuade them that you had been telling tales. Mischievous creatures such as he are best left alone, even if you are sure they cannot harm you. He is as much hated by Sable and Marten hunters as he is by all of us, for he has such a wonderful sense of smell that he scents out the stores of provisions they hide in case of need, and wastes all that he does not eat. He makes their traps useless, too—but that isn't to save the Sables, but because he wants the bait. The only creatures ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... des Capucines or des Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty, whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending their disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, the municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity. Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official. He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... often played tricks on me," he said to himself, "and now I will play one on them." So he went into the house and said, "Mother, I have found that I have a wonderful sense of smell, and by its help I can ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... of an experienced hunter, Phil had been careful when starting out to head into the wind. This was done so that a deer would not discover his presence through any sense of smell, until he ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... way:—Lying at the right side of the raft, he let his hand hang over into the water. Suddenly he was surprised by the impression made on it by the current. It seemed to be of a slimy consistency, as if it had been made of mineral oil. Alcide, aiding his touch by his sense of smell, could not be mistaken. It was really a layer of liquid naphtha, floating on ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... fermentations in preparing snuff, much of the nicotin is evaporated and lost. Yet snuff-takers impair the sense of smell, and ruin the voice, by clogging up the passages with the finer particles of the powder. The functions of the labyrinthine caverns of the nose and forehead, and of the delicate osseous laminae which constitute the sounding-boards ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the sacred vessels of the Tabernacle were anointed by Moses. It belongs to the particular group of umbelliferous plants which is endowed with balsamic gums, and with carminative essences appealing powerfully to the sense of smell. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... drawback to the enjoyment of the beauties of the Japanese country, and that is the intolerable affront which is continually offered to one's sense of smell; the whole of what should form the sewerage of the city is carried out on the backs of men and horses, to be thrown upon the fields; and, if you would avoid the overpowering nuisance, you must walk handkerchief ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... the mental state of criminals generally. Beginning with the senses, it may be said that very little stress can be laid on the experiments conducted by the Anthropological School as to peculiarities in the sense of smell, taste, sight, and so on, discovered among criminals. In all these inquiries it is so easy for the subject to deceive the investigator, and he has often so direct an interest in doing it that all results in ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... at as a moose in early winter. In summer it is not so—as then the musquitoes torment these animals to such a degree that they pay less heed to other enemies, and the hunter can more easily approach them. In winter they are always on the alert. Their sense of smell—as well as of sight and hearing—is acute to an extreme degree, and they are cunning besides. They can scent an enemy a long distance off—if the wind be in their favour—and the snapping of a twig, or the slightest rustle of the leaves, is ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... odors. The sense of smell is merely the force set in motion by the vibration of the elements. An instrument called the odophone demonstrates that a scale or gamut exists in flowers; that sharp smells indicate high tones and heavy smells low tones. Over fifty odors ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... the crown of his house-top, a builder's addition to the roof, where the detestable deeds he revelled in, calling them liberty, could be practised, according to the convention, and no one save rosy Mary, in her sense of smell, when she came upon her morning business to clean and sweep, be any the wiser of them, because, as it is known to the whole world, smoke ascends, and he was up among the chimneys. Here, he would say to his friends and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... WEBSTER.—Coons are very fond of fish, and you might bait your trap with salt cod-fish roasted to give it a strong smell. The sense of smell of a coon is very acute, and it will rarely pass a trap baited with ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... commencement of the pamphlet, the arrangement of which does not seem to us to be quite clear and easy, Dr. V. gives a sketch of the situation and localities of Leghorn. He traces the fevers of that place to putrid matters, perceptible by the sense of smell; and principally to obstructed drains. He does not give the exact degree of heat, but merely states that it was excessive, and followed ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... power of odors. The sense of smell is lightly appreciated in the Western world. A fragrance might be compounded which would have absolute power over a human being. We get wafts of scent to which something in us irresistibly answers. A satisfying sweetness, ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... attack it, and it is soon destroyed by their stings; but the carcass is so large, that they cannot carry it out of the hive, as they invariably do the bodies of the smaller insects which may have intruded, and it appears that their sense of smell is very acute. What, then, do they do to avoid the stench arising from the dead body of this large moth? Why, they embalm it, covering it entirely with wax, by which it no longer becomes ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... very hard description. These were employed in baking tortillas for the prisoners. Dirty, ragged, and miserable-looking creatures there were in these dismal vaults, which looked like purgatory, and smelt like—Heaven knows what! But, as I have frequently had occasion to observe in Mexico, the sense of smell is a doubtful blessing. Another large hall near this, which the prisoners were employed in cleaning and sweeping, has at least fresh air, opening on one side into a court, where poor little children, the saddest sight there, were running about—the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... [Sense of smell.] The sense of smell is developed amongst the natives to so great a degree that they are able, by smelling at the pocket-handkerchiefs, to tell to which persons they belong ("Reisesk.," p. 39); and lovers at parting exchange pieces of the linen they may be wearing, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... went on to Brady's Bend. Adler was a big, explosive German who had been a reserve officer, I think, in the Prussian army. Fate had linked us together when on the steamer the meat served in the steerage became so bad as to offend not only our palates, but our sense of smell. We got up a demonstration, marching to see the captain in a body, Adler and I carrying a tray of the objectionable meat between us. As the spokesman, I presented the case briefly and respectfully, and all would ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... hear sounds that men never hear; horses detect an impurity in water that a chemical analysis does not reveal, and homing pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing pigeon's "locality," he would not be one whit better prepared to appreciate Kipling's "Dipsy Chanty," and not a hair's breadth nearer a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... worn away, when set before a little dog, threw the animal into convulsions of fear by the slight scent attaching to it. The dog had never seen a wolf, and we can only explain this alarm by the hereditary transmission of certain sentiments, coupled with a certain perception of the sense of smell." ("Heredity," p. 43.) ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... of a theatre as regarded from the boxes or from the stage. Even that painful exposure of an optical illusion would be trifling compared with the imposture of Khartoum. The sense of sight had been deceived by distance, but the sense of smell was outraged by innumerable nuisances, when we set foot within the filthy and miserable town. After winding through some narrow, dusty lanes, hemmed in by high walls of sun-baked bricks that had fallen in gaps in several places, exposing gardens of prickly ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... been extreme, and another century passed, during which the tears with which Adam—from very different emotions—now bedewed the earth were not less effectual in producing every species of fragrant and aromatic flower and shrub, to delight the eye and gratify the sense of smell by their odours, than they were formerly in the generation of medicinal plants to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... air. The complex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night, are blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably to you (appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell.) All is comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are up there with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east, and over head the moon. A rare well-shadow'd hour! By no means the least of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... careful, like his small relative the field-vole, and like the squirrel in the woods above the river-bank, to harvest only ripe, undamaged seeds and nuts; and in making his choice he was helped by his exquisite sense of smell. He found some potatoes and carrots—so small that they had been dropped as worthless by a passing labourer on the river-path—and selected the best, leaving the others to rot among the autumn leaves. As the "pocket" was inadequate to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of Windsor,' act i. scene 1]; but Sir George ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the gauzy material which enwraps the young girls as in a soft mist; and then those shoulders, necks, and arms which released from the warm cloaks seem at once to grow firm and crisp as marble. My sense of smell, too, is gratified, for I delight in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... that, during his whole life, his ear should not indulge in the music of the tabor, cymbal, and pipe. He could restrain his eyes from enjoying the garden, and gratify his sense of smell without the rose or narcissus. Though he had not a pillow stuffed with down, he could compose himself to rest with a stone under his head; though he had no heart-solacer as the partner of his bed, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar,—rot of rat and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides—addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... question of progress along all lines. Any special function of the mind may have in certain animal groups an especially high development, and we see certain parts correspondingly developed. The dog has certainly a keener sense of smell than the man—the part of the brain which is in direct connection with the olfactory nerve is correspondingly much bulkier in the dog's brain than in the human organism. Here too, of course, research may be carried to the subtlest details and the microscope has ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... magnetic power in its solid parietes, of the electrical in its branching arteries, and of the third greatest power, viz., the qualitative and interior, in its marrow. The senses of fish are more distinct than those of insects. Thus, the intensity of its sense of smell has been placed beyond doubt, and rises in the extent of its sphere far beyond the irritable sense, or the feeling, in insects. I say the feeling, not the touch; for the touch seems, as it were, a supervention to the feeling, a perfection given to it ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... as dispassionately as if we were in our studies examining the wonders of the minute creation through a microscope. In America, we have before us a living model, blind, mute, deaf, and without the sense of smell; communicating with the external world by the sense of touch alone; yet endowed with a rare intelligence, which permits us to see, through the fourfold veil that shrouds her, the original germs of the human character.[1] Nearer home, we have been from time to time attracted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... were not needed—and very little guidance of rein. The little Galloways, Louis's black "Honeypot" and Stair's "Derry Down," picked their way swiftly and cleanly. They might have been steering by the stars. But it was only their instinct sense of smell which told them when they were approaching a bog too soft to be negotiated. Then they would turn their faces to the hill, questing for the good odour of the "gall" or bog-myrtle, which is the characteristic smell of good ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... shadows or flashing lights in the dark. Such cases are not good illustrations of the point, possibly, but most of us can at will hear a connected succession of notes with which we have familiarized ourselves. In my own recent experience there occurred a very clear and wholly unexpected subjective sense of smell when reading of an experiment with frogs which recalled the distinctive odor of slimy water. Mr. James Sully, in "Illusions," says, "Stories are told of portrait painters who could summon visual images of their sitters with a vividness equal to that of reality, and serving all the purposes of ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... left, we pass tea gardens, the tufty bushes low to the ground. What strikes us first is the amazing regularity of the rows and the cleanness of the ground. An aroma of tea in the making escapes from the roadside factory and agreeably assails our sense of smell as we ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... foolish thought into nothingness and after a glance back to make sure that his companions followed, he resolutely stepped out into the very heart of the man-scent. So closely was that phantom located by the sense of smell that it seemed to Alcatraz he could see the exact spot on the hillside behind a small rock where the ghost must lie. Yet he disdained to flee from empty air and for all his beating heart he raised his head and walked sedately on. The danger ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself. We knew that yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before. It smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no ordinary sea air can hope to head against it. So far as sense of smell is concerned, one might be spending a week in Limehouse Hole. There is no place to get out of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half of that is taken up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to light it. You have to take your bath ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... periscope: "It's German the most of them are, anyway," he said, "that's one consolation, although it's small comfort to a sense of smell. I say, have a look at that man lying over there, out to the left of the listening-post. His head is towards us, and his hair is white as driven snow. They must be getting hard up for men to be using up the grandfathers of ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived him of speech; a timidity like that he had felt in his early youth when, far from the easy conquests on his estate in Majorca, he ventured to address himself to worldly-wise women on the Continent. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... The dog's sense of smell is keener than that of the cat, but its sense of hearing is less acute. Account for these differences from the animals' habits of hunting. Why does the cat bring home living animals to her kittens, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education



Words linked to "Sense of smell" :   modality, sensory system, olfactory modality, sense modality, smell, nose, exteroception



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