Not only is it in the usages of language that taste is a paradoxical sense; it is at the same time one of the most ancient of the special senses and also one about which exact knowledge is most difficult to acquire. It seems to afford a multitude of varying and distinctive _nuances_ of sensation, yet it can boast but a meager equipment of four fundamental sense qualities. It is a primitive and well-established sense in the evolution of man, and individuals might therefore be expected to resemble each other closely in their experience of it; yet the most trite of proverbs insists that “there is no accounting for tastes.” Indeed, in some languages it is even impossible to find distinctive names for such common taste experiences as bitter or even salt and sour. A survey of the phenomena and laws of the sense of taste reveals, in fact, no end of curious and interesting situations. Of particular interest are the recent demonstrations of the great importance of taste for the general well-being of the organism. With the development of civilized modes of living men cease to rely implicitly or entirely on the sense of taste in their discrimination between wholesome and deleterious foods. They substitute for taste the evidence of the commercial trade-mark, the label, and the pure-food guarantee. It might have been supposed that under such circumstances the sense of taste would deteriorate through loss of function. But recent studies show that sensations of taste do far more than serve as clues to the acceptance or rejection of food. Such sensations appear, in fact, to be the initial stimulus to the whole series of digestive and assimilative processes on which the well-being of the organism depends. In much the same way the dulling or perversion of the taste sensations is often seen to constitute an early warning of grave disorder in the system as a whole, and their restoration to presage the return to normal health. Developing as one of the earliest forms of sensitiveness, intimately associated with the vital processes of life and growth, affording manifold richness of pleasure and aversion, full of paradoxical surprises and puzzling problems, and figuratively expressing one of the rarest of human qualities, “the sense of taste” constitutes one of man’s most interesting contacts with the outer world.