The sense of smell is intimately combined with that of taste; indeed, it is a powerful auxiliary to it, for, as a learned writer well observes, "taste, without the aid of smell, would be very vague in its indications, and limited in its range." Nevertheless, savage people, in whom the sense of smell is far more acute than in civilized races, do not appear to possess a greater refinement of taste--indeed, what the former regard as delicacies would be rejected by the latter with abhorrence. Most quadrupeds possess the sense of smell in far greater perfection than man, and are evidently influenced by it in their choice or rejection of food. In the carnivorous tribes this sense is, perhaps, at its highest ratio, and many pursue their prey guided by their olfactory organs alone. Certain odours are agreeable to some few animals, irrespective of food; but on this point our range of information is limited. The cat delights in the scent of valerian, and some other herbs, although they are not among the articles of this animal's diet; yet to the cat and the dog, the odour of the sweetest flowers yields no pleasure. Birds, in general, are endowed with the sense of smell in a far lower degree than quadrupeds, and the olfactory organs are far less developed. Birds of prey are guided by their keen powers of vision, and, indeed, if we are to trust to the experiments of Audubon, the sense of smell even in the carrion-loving vulture, contrary to the opinion of the ancients, as well as of modern naturalists, is at a low ratio; for, as he asserts, the stuffed skin of an animal will attract a vulture from its "pride of place," in the upper regions of the air. It is true that this assertion has been contradicted by Mr. Waterton, but it is again confirmed by the experiments and observations of Mr. Bachman, which are recorded in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, viii. 167; and M. Levuillant seems to have considered that it is by the eye chiefly, if not exclusively, that the vulture obtains its disgusting food. The following observations from the proceedings of the Zoological Society will be here, perhaps, not unacceptable:--