Aromatics and the Soul: A Study of SmellsMcKenzie, Dan
Science
Aromatics and the Soul: A Study of Smells
McKenzie, Dan
Smell
The obvious test was employed of trying to drown the supposed odour of
the female by filling the room she was in with powerful aromas, like
naphthaline, paraffin, the alkaline sulphides, and the like. But in
spite of the presence of these stenches, in our experience overwhelming
to fainter exhalations, the males still continued to arrive in droves.
This result led Fabre to doubt whether it could really have been an
odour that attracted them. But surely this negative conclusion ignores
the possibility of the moths being anosmic to these gross scents while
highly specialised for one particular olfactory stimulus to which, as a
matter of fact, we ourselves are wholly insensitive.
Apart from this particular problem, however, to which we return below,
biologists agree that insects undoubtedly possess an olfactory sense
capable of appreciating the same kind of odours as ours does. Lubbock,
for example, demonstrated that ants give signs of perceiving the
presence of musk and other perfumes. There is no doubt, indeed, that the
olfactory sense plays a great, it may be a preponderating part in their
life-activity.
The olfactory organ of insects is situated at the bottom of little
crypts in the antennæ and in the palpi of the mouth apparatus, more
particularly in the antennæ. And those insects, like bees, wasps,
butterflies and moths, that frequent flowers, are attracted to them by
their perfumes as well as by their colours. It has been found, for
example, that covering up flowers from view does not put a stop to the
visits of insects. Some naturalists go so far, indeed, as to say that
odour is their principal guide. At all events, the sarcophagic and
stercophagic insects are attracted to their food chiefly, if not
entirely, by odour. Fabre has recorded how such insects are lured to
their death by certain insectivorous plants which exhale a smell like
that of putrid beef.
In this connection I may interpolate here an experience which shows that
this class of insect may be attracted solely by odour. Incidentally, it
also manifests how the olfactory sense of insects can be utilised in the
matter of hygiene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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