The power which certain odours possess of exciting venereal desires admits not the slightest doubt, at least as far as the inferior animals are concerned. Nearly all the mammifera exhale or emit, in the rutting season, peculiar emanations serving to announce from afar to the male the presence of the female and to excite in him the sexual desire. Facts have been observed with respect to insects even, which cannot be otherwise accounted for than by odorous effluvia. If, for instance, the female of the bombyx butterfly, be placed in a box accurately closed, it will not be long before several males will be seen flying around the prison, and which could not possibly have known, by means of their visual organs, the presence of their captive Dulcinea. Now the question is, does anything analogous take place in our own species? Many authors assert that there does, and among them Virey, who, speaking of such exhalations, says: "L'extrême propreté des hommes et des femmes, l'habitude de se baigner et de changer souvent de linge _font disparaïtre_ les odeurs génitales.[160] ... On doit aussi remarquer que la haire des Cénobites, la robe des Capucins, le froc des moines, les vêtements rudes et mal-propres de diverses corporations religieuses exposent ceux qui les portent à de fortes tentations, à cause de la qualité stimulante et de la sueur fétide dont étaient bientôt empreintes toutes ces sortes d'habillements."[161] "Odours," observes Cabanis[162] "act powerfully upon the nervous system, they prepare it for all the pleasurable sensations; they communicate to it that slight disturbance or commotion which appears as if inseperable from emotions of delight, all which may be accounted for by their exercising a special action upon those organs whence originate the most rapturous pleasure of which our nature is susceptible. In infancy its influence is almost nothing, in old age it is weak, its true epoch being that of youth, that of love." It is certain that among most nations, and from the remotest antiquity, voluptuous women strengthened their amorous propensities by the use of various perfumes, but particularly of musk, to which has been attributed the power of exciting nocturnal emissions. The great Henry IV., of France, no novice in love affairs, was opposed to the use of odours, maintaining that the parts of generation should be allowed to retain their natural scent, which, in his opinion, was more effectual than all the perfumes ever manufactured by art.