More Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
More Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
On the other hand, odours exist in vast variety amongst plants and
animals which have not acquired any special association or
significance. We find that some organisms produce as a result of their
chemical life material which oxidises and gives out light and so these
organisms are "phosphorescent" without any consequence, good or bad,
to themselves. And then we come upon others (as, for instance, the
glow-worms and fire-flies) which have made use of this "accidental"
quality, and produce phosphorescent light in special organs so as to
attract the opposite sex. Again, we find that the red-coloured
oxygen-seizing crystalline substance haemoglobin exists in the blood of
a vast number of animals, and might as well be green or colourless for
all the good its colour does them. Yet here and there the splendid red
colour which this chemical gives to the blood becomes of great
importance as a "decoration," or "sex-ornament." The comb of the
domestic fowl, the wattles of the turkey, but above all the supreme
beauty of the human race--the cherry-red lips and the crimson-blushing
cheek of healthy youth--owe their wonderful colour to the red blood
which flows through them. So at last the redness, of the
oxygen-carrier is turned to account. So it must be also with odorous
substances. Many have been called into existence, but few have been
chosen in the long course of animal evolution and selected as the
important means of repulsion or attraction.
There are odorous substances attached to many of the lower animals
which seem to have no significance, but just happen to be the result
of necessary chemical changes, not aimed (so to speak) at their
production. Of course, it is very difficult to form a certain and
definite conclusion as to their uselessness as odours. For instance,
nearly all the sponges when fresh and filled with living protoplasm
have a curious smell which reminds one of that given off by a stick of
phosphorus. Marine sponges have it and so has the beautiful green or
flesh-coloured liver sponge (common on the wood of rafts and weirs in
the Thames). A rather uncommon marine worm, called _Balanoglossus_ or
the acorn worm, has a very strong and unpleasant smell like that of
iodoform. In neither case is the nature of the odorous body known, nor
its use to the animal suggested. Smelts smell like cucumbers: the
green-bone fish and the mackerel smell alike. One of the common
earth-worms has a strong aromatic smell, and the common snail, as well
as the sea-hare and one of the cuttle-fishes (_Eledone_), smells like
musk. Musk itself is produced, as a scent attracting the opposite sex,
by several animals--musk-deer, musk-sheep, musk-rats. I am not now
attempting to enumerate the well-recognised odours of animals such as
are extracted from them by man in order to "opsonize" himself, but am
pointing to the more obscure cases. There is not a very great or
marked variety in the odours of fishes; but reptiles with their dry,
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