Though the past history of the Mediterranean sea shows that it was formerly not so extensive as it is now, and that there were junctions between Europe and Africa across its waters, yet the deeper parts of that sea are very ancient, and some of the islands have long been isolated. In Malta the remains of extraordinary species of minute elephants have been found, one no larger than a small donkey, and in the island of Cyprus an English lady, Miss Dorothea Bate, has discovered the bones of a pigmy hippopotamus (like that still living in Liberia) no larger than a sheep. Miss Bate some three years ago heard of the existence of a bone-containing deposit of Pleistocene age in limestone caverns and fissures in the island of Majorca, and with the true enthusiasm of an explorer determined to carry on some "digging" there and see what might turn up. In the following spring she was there, and obtained a number of bones, jaws, and portions of skulls, which appeared at first sight to be those of a small goat. Its size may be gathered from the fact that its skull is six inches long. These and the bones of a few small finches were all that rewarded her pains. The bones of fossil goats (of living species) are found in caves at Gibraltar and in Spain; so at first the result seemed disappointing. But on carefully clearing out the specimens and examining them in London, Miss Bate found that the supposed goat bones obtained by her in Majorca were really those of a new and most extraordinary animal, to which (in a paper published in the "Geological Magazine" in September, 1910) she has given the name "Myotragus balearicus."



I must ask the reader now to look at the figures here given (Figs. 16 and 17) of the skull and the lower jaw of a goat. The lower jaw might (except for size) pass for that of a sheep, ox, antelope or deer. They are all alike. There are on each side six grinding cheek-teeth (molars), and then as we pass to the front we find a long toothless gap until we come to the middle line where the two halves of the jaw unite. There we see a little semicircular group of eight chisel-like teeth, which work against the toothless pad of the upper jaw opposed to them, and are the instruments by which these animals, with an upward jerk of the head, "crop" the grass and other herbage on which they feed, to be afterwards triturated by the grinding cheek teeth. A vast series of living and of fossil animals, called the Ruminants—including the giraffes, the antler-bearing forms called deer, the cavicorn or sheath-horned bovines, ovines and caprines, and the large series of antelopes of Africa and India—all have precisely this form of jaw, this number and shape and grouping of the teeth. Now let me call to mind the lower jaw of a hare or rabbit or rat (Figs. 18 and 19). There we find on each side the group of grinding cheek-teeth, with transverse ridges on their crowns, and a long, toothless gap before we arrive at the front teeth. But the front teeth are only two in number, one on each side, close to each other, very large, and each with a tremendously long, deeply set root. They meet a similar pair of teeth in the upper jaw, and give the hare, rabbit, rats, mice, beavers, and porcupines the power of "gnawing" tough substances. These animals are hence called Rodents, or gnawers, and the two great front teeth are called "rodent-teeth." No two arrangements of teeth could be much more unlike than are the group of eight little chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw of the Ruminants and the two enormous gnawing teeth of the Rodents. Apparently the two rodent incisors, or front teeth, of the lower jaw of the rat correspond to the two middle incisors of the Ruminant's lower jaw; the other front teeth of the Ruminant have atrophied, disappeared altogether. The rodent condition has been developed from that of an ancestor which had several front teeth and not two large ones only; but we have not at present found the intermediate steps.



The reader should compare the teeth of the goat and the large rat here pictured with the more typical and complete series of the pig, given in Fig. 10, p. 84. The pig's teeth are the same in number as those of the ancestral primitive typidentate mammal, and their form is near to that of the ancestor's teeth.

Now I come to the extraordinary interest of Miss Bate's goat-like or antelope-like animal from Majorca. Although it is shown by its skull (Fig. 20) and other bones to be distinctly one of the sheath-horned Ruminants, very like a small goat or antelope, the lower jaw, of which there are several specimens, does not present in front the little group of eight small chisel-like "cropping" teeth, but, instead, two enormous rodent teeth placed side by side, very deeply fixed in the jaw, and quite like those of some rat-like animals in shape. Hence the name given to this little marvel by Miss Bate—"Myotragus," "the rat-goat." This strange little animal also differs from goats and antelopes in having proportionately much thicker and shorter "feet" (cannon-bones) than they have.

If the remains of this strange little creature had turned up in more ancient strata—in Pliocene or Miocene—it would have not been quite so astonishing. But it would be still very remarkable, since it has all the characters of a goat-like creature in the shape of its skull, its bony horn-cores, its limb-bones, and its cheek-teeth; and yet, as it were monstrously and in a most disconcerting way, protrudes from its lower jaw two great rats' teeth. Nothing like it or approaching it or suggesting it, is known among recent or fossil Ruminants. They all without exception have a lower jaw with the teeth of the exact number and grouping which you may see in a sheep's lower jaw. We know hundreds of them, both living and fossil, many from the Pleistocene, others from Pliocene deposits, and even from the still older Miocene, but all keep to the one pattern of lower jaw and lower jaw teeth. It is only in this little island of Majorca, surrounded by very deep water and not known to have nurtured any other animal so large in size either in recent or geologic times, that we come upon a Ruminant with horns like a goat's, but with great rat-like front teeth in place of the semicircle of eight little cropping toothlets. The wonderful thing is that the bones found by Miss Bate are light and well preserved, evidently not very ancient—probably late Pleistocene in age.



The questions that arise are: Where did the rat-goat come from? How did this utterly peculiar change in a Ruminant's teeth come about? With regard to the second question, it is a matter of importance that although we have hitherto not discovered any Ruminants with this modification of the teeth, still less any cavicorn or sheath-horned Ruminant so altered, yet it is by no means rare amongst herbivorous mammals to find such rat-like teeth making their appearance, whilst the smaller side-teeth of the incisor group or front teeth disappear. The Australian kangaroos and wombats are a case in point—so is the lemur-like aye-aye of Madagascar (an insect eater). So is the Hyrax or "damian" of the Cape, and also the very ancient Plagiaulax from the prae-chalk Purbeck clay. But perhaps the best case for comparison with the ruminants is that of the rhinoceroses. There are a great many species and even genera of fossil and recent rhinoceroses. An old Miocene kind (called Hyracodon) has eight little teeth in the front of the lower jaw. In a Pliocene kind of rhinoceros (called R. incisivus) these are reduced to two, the middle two, which are of great size and project far forward—like those of the rat-goat of Majorca. Among living rhinoceroses the Indian species have these two front teeth, but smaller, whilst the square-mouthed African rhinoceros has none at all! This helps us, as a parallel, to understand "the strange case" of Myotragus. But, of course, the rhinoceroses are a distinct line of animal descent—remote from Ruminants. They are (like horses and tapirs) odd-toed hoofed beasts—not even-toed ones, as are pigs, camels, and ruminants.

* * * * *

On first considering the question of the origin of the rat-goat of Majorca, some naturalists will, no doubt, be tempted to suggest that it is a case of a sudden "sport," a "mutation" as they now call it, and not a result of gradual slowly developed reduction of the now lost teeth and correspondingly gradual enlargement of the two middle ones, taking many thousand generations to bring about. The fact that the rat-goat is found on an island cut off from competition with other animals will favour this view. On the other hand, there is the important and really remarkable fact that familiar as man has been for ages with Ruminants of many kinds—such as sheep, goats, cattle, deer—there is absolutely no case on record of an "oddity" or "monstrosity" resembling the rat-goat's condition occurring in the teeth of any of the hundreds of thousands of these animals killed and eaten by man, and therefore closely examined. Professor Bateson, who a few years ago ransacked the museums of Europe for instances of "discontinuous variation," or "sports," and wrote a valuable book on the subject, did not discover any example of the kind. Apart from the view, which is very generally held, that such sudden "mutations" as "rat-teeth in a ruminant" are—even should they occur—not perpetuated, we are not really in any way driven to suppose that the rat-goat of Majorca originated in that island. It is true that we know nothing like it in the Pliocene and Miocene of the Mediterranean region which could have been its immediate ancestor. But probably the ancestors of the rat-goat were slowly developed from a Miocene sheath-horned ruminant, a primitive sort of antelope in some part of North-west Africa, or in an extension of it now submerged in the Atlantic, and stragglers of this curious and now lost Ruminant stock were left in Majorca when in Miocene or early Pliocene times that island became detached from its Hispano-African connection.



CHAPTER VIII

VEGETARIANS AND THEIR TEETH

No mistake, said Huxley, is more frequently made by clever people than that of supposing that a cause or an opinion is unsound because the arguments put forward in its favour by its advocates are foolish or erroneous. Some of the arguments put forward in favour of the exclusive use by mankind of a vegetable diet can be shown to be based on misconception and error, and I propose now to mention one or two of these. But I wish to guard against the supposition that I am convinced in consequence that animal substances form the best possible diet for man, or that an exclusively vegetable diet may not, if properly selected, be advantageous for a large majority of mankind. That question, as well as the question of the advantage of a mixed diet of animal and vegetable substances, and the best proportion and quantity of the substances so mixed, must be settled, as also the question as to the harm or good in the habitual use of small quantities of alcohol, by definite careful experiment by competent physiologists, conducted on a scale large enough to give conclusive results. The cogency of the arguments in favour of vegetarianism which I am about to discuss is another matter.

In the first place it is very generally asserted by those who advocate a purely vegetable diet that man's teeth are of the shape and pattern which we find in fruit-eating or in root-eating animals allied to him. This is true. The warm-blooded hairy quadrupeds which suckle their young and are called "mammals" (for which word perhaps "beasts" is the nearest Anglo-Saxon equivalent) show in different groups and orders a great variety in their teeth. The birds of to-day have no teeth, the reptiles, amphibians, and fishes have usually simple conical or peg-like teeth, which are used simply for holding and tearing. In some cases the pointed pin-like teeth are broadened out so as to be button-like, and act as crushing organs for breaking up shell-fish. The mammals alone have a great variety and elaboration of the teeth.



In shape and size, as well as in number, the teeth of mammals are very clearly related to the nature of their food in the first place, and secondly to their use as weapons of attack or of defence. When the surface of the cheek-teeth is broad, with low and numerous tubercles, the food of the animal is of a rather soft substance, which yields to a grinding action. Such substances are fruits, nuts, roots, or leaves, which are "triturated" and mixed with the saliva during the process of mastication. Where the vegetable food is coarse grass or tree twigs, requiring long and thorough grinding, transverse ridges of enamel are present on the cheek-teeth, as in elephants, cattle, deer, and rabbits (see Figs. 8, 17, 19). Truly carnivorous animals, which eat the raw carcases of other animals, have a different shape of teeth. Not only do they have large and dagger-like canines or "dog-teeth" as weapons of attack, but the cheek-teeth (very few in number) present a long, sharp-edged ridge running parallel to the length of the jaw, the edges of which in corresponding upper and lower teeth fit and work together like the blades of a pair of scissors. The cats (including the lions, tigers and leopards) have this arrangement in perfection (see Figs. 21 and 22). They cut the bones and muscles of their prey into great lumps with the scissor-like cheek-teeth, and swallow great pieces whole without mastication. Insect-eating mammals have cheek-teeth with three or four sharp-pointed tubercles standing up on the surface. They break the hard-shelled insects and swallow them rapidly. The fish-eating whales have an immense number of peg-like pointed teeth only. These serve as do those of the seals—merely to catch and grip the fish, which are swallowed whole.

It is quite clear that man's cheek-teeth do not enable him to cut lumps of meat and bone from raw carcases and swallow them whole, nor to grip live fish and swallow them straight off (Pl. VI). They are broad, square-surfaced teeth, with four or fewer low rounded tubercles fitted to crush soft food, as are those of monkeys (see Pl. VII and its description). And there can be no doubt that man fed originally, like monkeys, on easily crushed fruits, nuts, and roots. He could not eat like a cat.

A fundamental mistake has arisen amongst some of the advocates of vegetarianism by the use of the words "carnivorous" and "flesh-eating" in an ill-defined way. Man has never eaten lumps of raw meat and bone, and no one proposes that he should do so to-day. Man did not take to meat-eating until he had acquired the use of fire, and had learnt to cook the meat before he ate it. He thus separated the bone and intractable sinew from the flesh, which he rendered friable and divisible by thorough grilling, roasting, or baking. To eat meat thus altered, both chemically and in texture, is a very different thing from eating the raw carcases of large animals. Man's teeth are thoroughly fitted for the trituration of cooked meat, which is, indeed, as well suited to their mechanical action as are fruits, nuts, and roots. Hence we see that the objection to a meat diet based on the structure of man's teeth does not apply to the use of cooked meat as diet. The use by man of uncooked meat is not proposed or defended.

Yet, further, it is well to take notice of the fact that there are many vegetarian wild animals which do not hesitate to eat certain soft animals or animal products when they get the chance. Thus, both monkeys and primitive men will eat grubs and small soft animals, and also the eggs of birds. Whilst the cat tribe, in regard to the chemical action of their digestive juices, are so specialised for eating raw meat that it is practically impossible for them to take vegetable matter as even a small portion of their diet, and whilst, on the other hand, the grass-eating cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, deer and giraffes are similarly disqualified from any form of meat-diet, most other land-mammals can be induced, without harm to themselves, to take a mixed diet, even in those cases where they do not naturally seek it. Pigs, on the one hand, and bears, on the other, tend naturally to a mixed diet. Many birds, under conditions adverse to the finding of their usual food, will change from vegetable to animal diet, or vice-versa. Sea-gulls normally are fish-eaters, but some will eat biscuit and grain when fish cannot be had. Pigeons have been fed successfully on a meat diet; so, too, some parrots, and also the familiar barn-door fowl. Many of our smaller birds eat both insects and grain, according to opportunity. Hence it appears impossible to base any argument against the use of cooked meat as part of man's diet upon the structure of his teeth, or upon any far-reaching law of Nature which decrees that every animal is absolutely either fitted (internally and chemically, as well as in the matter of teeth) for a diet consisting exclusively of vegetable substances, or else is immutably assigned to one consisting exclusively of animal substances. There is no a priori assumption possible against the use as food by man of nutritious matter derived from animals' bodies properly prepared.

So far as a priori argument has any value in such a matter, it suggests that the most perfect food for any animal—that which supplies exactly the constituents needed by the animal in exactly right quantity and smallest bulk—is the flesh and blood of another animal of its own species. This is a startling theoretical justification—from the purely dietetic point of view—of cannibalism. It is, however, of no conclusive value; the only method which can give us conclusions of any real value in this and similarly complex matters is prolonged, full, well-devised, well-recorded experiment. At the same time, we may just note that the favourite food of the scorpion is the juice of the body of another scorpion, and that the same preference for cannibalism exists in spiders, many insects, fishes, and even higher animals.

Another line of argument by which some advocates of vegetarianism appeal to the popular judgment is by representing flesh-food derived from animals as something dirty, foul, and revolting, full of microbic germs, whilst vegetable products are extolled as being clean and sweet—free from odour and putrescence and from the scaremonger's microbes. This, I perhaps need hardly say, is a gigantic illusion and misrepresentation. I came across it the other day in a very unreasonable pamphlet on food by the American writer, Mr. Upton Sinclair. Putrefactive microbes attack vegetable foods and produce revolting smells and poisons in them, just as they do in foods of animal origin. It is true that on the whole more varieties of vegetable food can be kept dry and ready for use by softening with hot water than is the case with foods prepared from animals. This is only a question of not keeping food too long or in conditions tending to the access of putrefactive bacteria. It is, on the whole, more usual and necessary, in order to render it palatable, to apply heat to flesh, fish, and fowl than to fruits. And it is by heat—heat of the temperature of boiling water—applied for ten minutes or more, that poison-producing and infective bacteria are killed and rendered harmless. More people have become infected by deadly parasites and have died from cholera and similar diseases, through having taken the germs of those diseases into their stomachs with raw and over-ripe fruit or uncooked vegetables and the manured products of the kitchen garden, than have suffered from the presence of disease-germs or putrefactive bacteria in well-cooked meat. Here, in fact, "cooking" makes all the difference, just as it does in the matter we were discussing above of the fitness of flesh and bone for trituration by man's teeth.

[Illustration: Plate VI.—The series of teeth in the upper (1) and lower jaw (2) of a modern European (natural size). The teeth are placed closely side by side without a gap—an arrangement which does not occur in the apes nor in any other living mammal, although it is found in some extinct herbivores—the Anoplotherium and the Arsinoeitherium. The shape of the arch formed by the row of teeth should be compared with that shown by the same arch in the Gibbon (Pl. VII). The crowns of the teeth are very carefully drawn in this figure, which is from a plate published by Professor Selenka.

It must be noted that the number of tubercles on the true molars may be in exceptional cases one more or one less than that given in this drawing which gives the most usual number. The word "molar" is often used to include the five cheek-teeth on each side of each jaw, but more strictly the anterior bicuspid teeth are called "pre-molars," and the three larger teeth behind them, which have no predecessors or representatives in the first or milk dentition, are called true molars or simply "molars"—a rule we have followed here.

In both upper and lower jaw we see the four incisors in the middle (Inc. 1, Inc. 2); on each side of them is the conical crown of a canine—a tooth which is greatly enlarged in the ape (see Pl. VII), but is no larger proportionately than it is here even in the most ancient known human jaw, that from the Pleistocene of Heidelberg (see "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1910, p. 405). The two small bicuspid "pre-molars" and the three large molars follow these on each side in each jaw. The crown of the most anterior (or "first") molar of the upper jaw has four cusps, tubercles, or cones on it. It is "quadri-tuberculate." The second and third molars of the upper jaw have three such prominent tubercles (excluding a row of small tubercles on the hinder margin of the second); they are, in fact, tri-tuberculate; whilst the two hindermost molars of the lower jaw have four tubercles and are called quadri-tuberculate. The first molar (M1) of the lower jaw has in this specimen five tubercles. In 60 per cent. of European lower jaws this is the case. But in 40 per cent. this tooth is quadri-tuberculate. In Polynesians, Chinese, Melanesians and negroes five tubercles are found on this tooth in 90 per cent. of the jaws examined. The apes are characterised by five tubercles on this tooth, and they are found also on the first lower molars of prehistoric men. Four tubercles only on this tooth is a departure from the ape's condition and is found more frequently in Europeans.

It is obvious that these big molar teeth, as well as the two smaller ones in front of them on each side of each jaw, are adapted for breaking up rather soft, pulpy food, and not for cutting lumps of bone or raw flesh, as are the molars of the clouded tiger (identical with those of all species of the genus Felis), shown in Figs. 21 and 22, pp. 103, 104, nor for rubbing grain, grass or herbage to a paste, as are those of the goat (Fig. 17), those of the Coypu rat (Fig. 19), and those of the elephants and mastodons (Fig. 8).]

[Illustration: Plate VII.—Drawings of (1) the upper and (2) the lower series of teeth of the Gibbon (Hylobates concolor), one of the anthropoid or most man-like apes (enlarged by one third). If these drawings are compared with those in Pl. VI, showing man's teeth, the most striking difference seen is that the "arch" or series of teeth is here elongated and squared, not rounded in front, whilst there is plenty of room in both jaws for the last or wisdom tooth, which is not the case in modern races of men, though in the ancient Neander man's jaw and in that from Heidelberg there is ample space for the last molar as in the apes. The next most important difference is that in the gibbon the four canine teeth are very large and tusk-like, and must certainly be of value as weapons of attack—which man's are not. Connected with the large size of the canines is the presence of a gap (or "diastema" as it is called) between the four front teeth or incisors of the upper jaw and the upper canine—which allows the lower canine to fit in front of the upper canine when the jaw is closed. The number of the tubercles or cones on the molars (the two smaller pre-molars and the three hinder large molars) can be compared in detail in these beautiful drawings from Professor Selenka's work, which are the most careful and perfect which have ever been published. The agreement of these teeth in man and the gibbon is very close: but there are differences. The first, or most anterior pre-molar of the lower jaw has one predominant cusp or cone; the second, like both in the upper jaw, is "bicuspid," or bi-tuberculate, as in man. The three big molars of the upper jaw are closely similar to those of man, with some small differences, the second being quadri-tuberculate, whilst in man it is as often tri-tuberculate (as it is in Pl. VI) as it is quadri-tuberculate. But the two anterior big molars of the lower jaw are seen to have each five well-marked cones, cusps or tubercles; they are quinqui-tuberculate, whilst in man the first lower molar is often quadri-tuberculate and the second even more frequently so. The last lower molar (wisdom tooth) of the gibbon is like that of man, quadri-tuberculate.

The details of the tubercles on these molar teeth distinctly justify the conclusion that they are adapted in the two animals compared—namely, man and the gibbon—to food of the same mechanical quality, and this undoubtedly is fruit and nuts. Nevertheless such a form of tooth is equally well adapted to the texture of cooked meat, which has served many races of man for probably hundreds of thousands of years as food.]

Once we remember that man is not fitted for the "raw meat" diet of the carnivora, but is fitted for the "cooked meat" diet which he has himself discovered—alone of all animals—we shall get rid of a misleading prejudice in the consideration of the question as to whether civilised men should or should not make cooked meat a portion of their diet, with the purpose of maintaining themselves in as healthy and vigorous a state as possible. Do not let us forget that ancient Palaeolithic cave-men certainly made use of fire to cook their meals of animal flesh, and that probably this use of fire dates back to a still earlier period when, in consequence of this application of the red, running tongues of flame, which he had learned to produce, primitive man was able to leave the warmer climates of the earth and their abundant fruits, and to establish himself in temperate and even sub-Arctic regions.

Experiments on a large and decisive scale in regard to the value of the different foods taken by man and the question of the desirability of cooked meat as part of his diet have never been carried out, nor has the use of alcohol been studied by direct experimental method on a large scale. Inasmuch as the feeding of our Army and Navy, of prisoners, lunatics, and paupers, is the business of the State, it is obviously the duty of the Government to investigate this matter and arrive at a decision. It can be done by the Government, and only by the Government. The Army Medical Department is fully capable, and, I am told, desirous, of undertaking this investigation. Five hundred soldiers in barracks would find it no hardship, but an agreeable duty (if rewarded in a suitable way), to submit to various diets, and to comparative tests of the value of such diets. There would be no difficulty in arranging the experimental investigation. Fifty years ago similar work (but not precisely in regard to the questions now raised) was done by the Army Medical Department, under Parkes, with most valuable and widely recognised results.



CHAPTER IX

FOOD AND COOKERY

Animals, taking one kind with another, nourish themselves on an immense variety of food. The flesh and the blood of other animals of all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants, putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the juices of one species of animal. Some of the latter class, under stress or privation, can accommodate themselves to a new food very different in character and origin from that which is habitual to them; others have no elasticity in this respect, and must have their exact habitual food-plant or food-animal, unless they are to die of starvation.

Man exhibits his great powers of accommodation to changed circumstances in respect of food as well as in other matters. If we are to suppose, as is probable, that our original ape-like ancestors fed exclusively upon fruits and an occasional egg or juicy grub, how vast are the changes in diet to which man has habituated himself! Man is sometimes said to be omnivorous, but this is not a sufficient description of the state of things which has grown up as he has spread over the earth's surface. Every race—and even many a small group of men—has its accustomed diet, to depart from which is a pain and a difficulty, even though new kinds of food may be gradually accepted and even become popular. Man has in this, as in so many other things, a large range of possible accommodation, but he has at the same time habits the continuance of which are necessary for the healthy working of the nervous system. The psychical element in the matter of food-habit is important in all higher animals, but most of all in man. The digestive organs are controlled by the nervous system, and the brain acts upon the latter in such a way as to favour or to restrain the "appetite" and the secretion of the elaborate digestive juices, so that fear, surprise, disgust, and "nausea" (that strange product of mental and physical reactions) may destroy appetite and inhibit the digestive process. There are vast populations of men who live on rice, or beans, or meal, and never eat animal food, not even milk (after babyhood), nor cheese, and would be, at a first attempt to eat it, "put off" and disgusted by a mutton chop. There are others who subsist almost entirely on fish, others who live on dried beef, others who live on the fat of whales and seals, and would be for a generation or two injured, half starved, and some of them even killed, by a change of diet. Again, there are others who consider that they must have and will be "ill" unless they had the cooked flesh of an ox or sheep as part of their daily food. Let us examine this latter group a little more fully—a group to which the nations of Europe belong, with the exception of the Italians, who are essentially a meal-, fruit-, and cheese-eating people.

Apparently at a very early time, even before the last glacial period, man had learnt the use of fire, and roasted or grilled the carcases of other animals which he killed in the chase, in order to consume them as food. We have no reason to suppose that man ever made use of the raw flesh of higher animals as his habitual diet. His teeth are not, and never were, from his earliest ape-like days, adapted to true carnivorous diet. Cooked meat is not the food of a carnivor, but is an adaptation of the flesh of animals to the requirements of a frugivorous animal. Probably the use of grain and cultivated vegetable food is a later step in human progress than the roasting of meat. The Neandermen, and even the later Reindeer-men (Cromagnards), had no cultivated fields, but lived on roasted meat (of beasts, birds, and fish) and wild fruits. We know how thoroughly the most ancient Greeks enjoyed the long slices of roasted meat cut from the chine, as told in the Homeric poems, and everywhere in Europe after the neolithic or polished-stone period, meat was a main article of diet, in conjunction with the vegetable products of agriculture. In this country, after the Norman conquest, meat-eating was greatly favoured by the important industry which grew up in hides. The land was well suited for the pasturage of cattle, and owing to the smallness of the population and the abundance of cattle slaughtered for their hides, meat was almost to be had for the asking. It was thus that Englishmen became great meat-eaters and that "the roast beef of Old England" was established. Later the same superfluity of meat—in this case, "mutton"—recurred and became general when wool-growing and the manufacture of woollen goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been maintained.

But the increase of population has led to a considerable change in the diet of a very large proportion—the poorer part—of the community. Whilst the families of the better-paid working class and all the middle and upper class continue to eat meat, the agricultural labourer and the poorer workmen in towns live chiefly on flour, sugar, bacon, and cheese. Probably they have become habituated to this diet, and, provided that the quantity is sufficient, it cannot be maintained that the diet, in which meat is nearly or altogether absent, is unhealthy. Many vigorous and muscularly well-developed populations in other lands thrive on exclusively vegetable food.

A curious and not altogether comforting reflection is that if the inexpensive and simple food of the agricultural labourer is sufficient, the section of the community which spends from five to ten shillings per head a day on a mixed diet of meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables is guilty of waste and excess. Here, however, the remarkable, and, in fact, exceptional domination of "habit" (in the case of man), in regard to both the actual articles of food and the mode of its preparation, has to be recognised. Such and such inexpensive and unskilfully prepared food may contain more than the necessary amount of proteids (that is, matters like flesh, the casein of cheese and of vegetables, and the albumen of eggs), of hydro-carbons (i.e., fats), of carbo-hydrates (i.e., starch and sugar), yet if you were suddenly to compel a man accustomed to well-cooked meat to live on such food he would be unable to assimilate it, his digestive organs would refuse to work, and he would become, if not seriously ill, yet so ill-nourished and sickly that he would be unfit for his work and readily fall a victim to disease. It is, in fact, impossible to lay down any scheme of diet based on the mere provision of the necessary quantities of food materials whilst ignoring the formed habits of the individual and the relation of the psychical conditions which we call "taste," "appetite," "fancy," "disgust," to the actual processes of digestion and the consequent efficiency of the proposed diet.

No doubt gradually, after a few generations, a whole people may become healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by fortitude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive, and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when once, after a transition period of distress and injury, habituated or "attuned" to that diet. The difficulty is to arrive at a conclusion as to what is really the suitable and reasonable diet for an individual—yourself or one like yourself—having regard to the lifelong habits of the individual, and the consequent nervous reactions established in him or her in relation to the taste, quality, and mode of presentation of food. Robust people, so long as they get what suits their own uncultivated taste, are apt to make very light of what they call "fancies" about food, and to overlook their real importance.

Feeding on the part of civilised man is not the simple procedure which it is with animals, although many animals are particular as to their food and what is called "dainty." The necessity for civilised man of cheerful company at his meal, and for the absence of mental anxiety, is universally recognised, as well as the importance of an inviting appeal to the appetite through the sense of smell and of sight, whilst the injurious effect of the reverse conditions, which may lead to nausea, and even vomiting, is admitted. Even the ceremonial features of the dinner table, the change of clothes before sitting down to the repast, the leisurely yet precise succession of approved and expected dishes, accompanied by pleasant talk and light-hearted companionship, are shown by strict scientific examination to be important aids to the healthy digestion of food, which need not be large in quantity, although it should be wisely presented.

These psychical conditions of healthy feeding are not trivial matters, as we are too apt to suppose. They are part, and a very important part, of the physiology of nutrition, and so deserving of scientific inquiry and of practical attention. They have been made the subject of careful experiment by a Russian physiologist, Pavloff. At a recent meeting of the British Association this matter was brought under discussion in the Physiological Section, and it was pointed out by the author of a very interesting communication that the whole question as to what is and what is not a sound and healthy diet is too often dealt with by writers who ignore the psychical (or shall we say the cerebral?) factor. Cases were cited of dangerous arrest of the power of digesting, or even of swallowing, food which were cured by giving the patient some apparently inappropriate and probably harmful article of food for which he or she had a fancy, such as a grilled salmon-steak, the last thing which would be spontaneously recommended by a medical man to a patient who had been suffering for weeks from inability to take food. The willingness is all—the assent, the approval of the cerebral centres, and the consequent unlocking of the whole arrested mechanism of digestive secretions and movements. Such a case is only an extreme instance. But it is undoubtedly the fact that just as the sight of so small a thing as a drop of blood, or even the word "blood," will on occasion cause a strong, healthy man to faint, so quite a small excess or defect in the accustomed quality of food will at times arrest the appetite and digestive processes of a healthy man. To many a healthy individual one among many flavours and savours associated with agreeable food is necessary in order that healthy appetite and proper digestion may be set going, and the absence of the right flavour and the presence of what is, in his experience, a wrong and disgusting smell or taste in the food set before him, will produce nausea and complete arrest of the digestive processes.

It is apparently owing to this cause that "tinned meats" have proved to be of little value as rations for an army in campaign, for exploring expeditions, and for remote mining camps. It is not that such tinned meats do not contain the necessary constituents of food, or that they contain poisonous substances, but that they produce a sense of disgust, and arrest the digestive processes. Soldiers, travellers, and miners have assured me that they prefer a dry biscuit and dried, or salted, or sugared meat, to the supposed more "tasty" tinned meats, and that such is the general experience of their comrades.

Of similar nature is another very serious trouble, in regard to the healthy feeding of the modern Englishman, which has come upon us in consequence of the quite modern system of huge restaurants, whether in London or in the very large hotels, which are now run in Swiss, Italian and English summer resorts. Hundreds of visitors are "catered for" daily. There is no attempt at anything which deserves the name of cookery. Great monopolists control the supplies, and contract to deliver to these hotels, even in out-of-the-way localities, so much ice-stored, "mousey" fish, "mousey" quails, stringy meat, impossible vegetables and fruits, gathered from the cheapest markets of Europe and of a quality just not bad enough to cause a revolt among the hotel visitors. The heating of the food is done by patent machinery in ovens and by the use of boiling fat. No cook is in these circumstances possible, with his artistic feeling for the production of a perfect result of skill and taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce, manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to a state of indigestion, semi-starvation and misery.

The Englishman who is disgusted by the new mechanical methods of cookery in the great hotels of Continental "resorts," returns to London, and finds the same atrocious system at work—not only in the public restaurants, but in his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on being served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay for it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice storage people take good care that you shall not obtain fresh fish, and so retain your taste for it. Nowhere at club or restaurant, with rare exceptions, can you obtain meat roasted in the old-fashioned way on a roasting-jack, carefully "basted" during the process, and served when exactly cooked to a turn. There were, only a few years ago, one or two such places surviving—both clubs and restaurants—where proper roasting was done, but, like the rest, they have now adopted lazy, economical, money-saving methods. Their managers calculate that what they do will serve. It is good enough for the crowd! So at last you abandon the efforts to obtain decent simple food, in club or hotel, and dine with your friend en famille. The same thing confronts you. The joint has been baked in an oven, of which it smells, and is surrounded by a sickly gravy, produced by pouring hot water over it! In conversation with your hostess, you find that she knows nothing whatever about the simplest elements of the preparation of food. She tells you she avoids roasting because it necessitates a large fire and an extra expenditure of L5 a year on coal, and she also purchases those mouldy, frost-bitten potatoes instead of the best, because they cost half as much as sound ones—and she herself does not care for potatoes. They are fattening!

Sometimes at a restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a Yorkshire pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also. Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the properly cooked article. True Yorkshire pudding can only be made by placing it under the roasting joint, which drips digestion-promoting essences into the pudding whilst itself rotating, hissing and spluttering—as did the joints roasted in the caves long ago by the prehistoric Reindeer-men. The scientific importance of good roasting and grilling is that a savour is thereby produced which sets the whole gastric and digestive economy of the man who sniffs it and tastes it, at work. Possibly our successors, a generation or two hence, will have learnt to do without this, and will have acquired as intimate and happy a gastronomic relation to what now are for us the nauseous flavours of superheated fat (rarely renewed), and of the all-pervading gravy fabricated by chemical treatment of yeast, as that which we ourselves have acquired in regard to the old-established and painstaking cookery of the early Victorian and many preceding ages.

Medical men who are occupied as specialists with the study of very young children have clearly demonstrated that the implanting of tastes, tendencies and habits in infants of from two to eight years of age has an immense importance in their subsequent development. Character and capacity are really formed in those early years. Food preferences, no less than mental and moral qualities, are then created. Yet the children of both rich and poor are in these early stages either left to haphazard or entrusted to ignorant nursemaids. For those of us who were not born to the present system the transition to the new methods of wholesale cookery is an abomination, and to escape from them a matter of difficulty. We have to secure an ancient roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our own kitchen, and to instruct our cook—since no woman has taught her what she ought to know—in the art of roasting and grilling, in the preparation of Yorkshire pudding, in the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper and distinct use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil, tarragon, marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and finally to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the seasoning of a salad.

Maybe that the present established relations of our appetites to the time-honoured savours, by which the ancient Jews sought to propitiate the Deity, are destined to be superseded. On the other hand it is quite possible that all the juggling of modern "machine" cookery is a false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is not unlikely that there is no relish which has so sure a hold on the digestion of European man, no appeal to the cerebral mechanism controlling the liberation of his gastric juices, which is so infallible as that emanating from "well and truly" roasted or grilled meat.

It is not easy to account for the present neglect of decent cookery and the triumph of the sham French cookery (for it is not French at all!) which is at present foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably the enormously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and of frequenters of restaurants in London have led to huge enterprise in "catering," and to a monopoly which has driven out of existence the smaller establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those small enterprises on which much of the sweetness and gaiety of life depends.

Even in the time of Charles II the skill and seriousness of French cookery as compared with our own was recognised. The high reputation of Scotch cooks at the present day seems to be due to an inheritance of traditions from the days of close association of the Scotch and French Courts. Up to nearly 100 years ago roasting was as usual a method of cooking meat in Paris as in London. There were "rotisseries" in Paris in the old days. High prices and thrift have led to the decadence of roasting as a popular method of cooking meat in France, but the great "chef" in a private house in Paris still produces the most perfect roast beef and roast saddle of mutton (better than you will find in England) in the old-fashioned way. So indifferent, or perhaps hopeless, are Englishmen in regard to cookery that they drink a strong champagne throughout dinner, content to drown the insipid taste of the food in the fine flavour of a drink upon which they can rely. An Englishman dining at a first-rate restaurant will usually spend twice as much for wine as for food, whilst a Frenchman will reverse the proportions. Another difference is one for which women are responsible. In Paris a party of French men and women at a table in a good restaurant enjoy their food, laugh and talk with one another, and do not concern themselves with the company at other tables. It would be bad manners to do so. But English-speaking women, when dining in public, seem to be chiefly interested, not in their food nor in their own party, but in pointing out to one another the celebrities or notorieties or eccentricities seated at other tables. So long as the place is fashionable and noisy, the food is negligible and neglected.

For some reason, which I am unable to discover, the women of England (it is not the case with those of France and Germany) have, with rare exceptions, no interest in or liking for "cookery," and yet the men have left the management of it entirely in their hands. Male "chefs" of English nationality are rare specimens, though they are, as a rule, the best at grilling and roasting. On the other hand, in France, where women no less than men value and understand cookery, there is an enormous body of professional male cooks. English-women of means and education have to such a degree neglected all knowledge of cookery and of the quality and criticism of kitchen supplies, such as meat, fish, birds, and vegetables, that there is no one to teach the poor country girls (who become cooks in the majority of households) the elements of the very difficult and important duties which they are expected—in virtue of some kind of inspiration or native genius—to discharge with skill and judgment: nor is there any head of a household capable of seeing that the necessary care and trouble are given. It is wonderful, under the circumstances, how clever and willing our domestic cooks are. A considerable section of English middle-class women at the present day are allowed by the men, who should guide them so as to make them honourable and useful members of the community, to grow up in complete ignorance of the essential parts of the art of cookery. This was not the case a hundred years ago. Now a large proportion of them have been led by bad example and foolish notions to give up such matters to "the servants," whether they are able to afford competent servants or even to judge of the competence of a servant or not. Many of these "mistresses" now devote themselves exclusively to "dress," "amusements," "charity," "politics," and dabbling inconsequently in various crazes. They are not to blame. It is the men who are to blame who deliberately neglect to give to their womenkind a training and education which shall make them real mistresses of household arts and business, so that they may be thus filled with the happy conviction (which is the one thing they most desire and most often cannot gain) that they are of real use—are really wanted—in the world.

In conclusion, let me tell of a great German sports-man, Major von Wissman, Governor of German East Africa, now no more, who came to see me at the Museum nine years ago. It was his first visit to London, and I took him to lunch at a famous grill-room. Happily, though roasting is dying out, the art of grilling still survives in this country, but nowhere else in Europe. Von Wissman said—"Can I have beer where we are going?" "Yes, certainly," I said. "German beer?" he asked. "No," I replied. "Something much better." When we were seated, I ordered a pint tankard of Reid's London stout for my friend. It was in perfect condition. He put his lips to it in doubt, but did not remove them until, with reverential drooping of the eyelids, he had emptied the tankard. "The very finest beer I have ever swallowed," he said. "What in the name of goodness is it?" I told him, and ordered him more. Soon a perfectly grilled chop and a large, clean, floury potato were before him. He proceeded to eat, and was really and unaffectedly astonished. "But this is marvellous," he said, "wonderful! enchanting! I have never really tasted meat before in my life. Reitzend! Colossal!" He had a steak to follow, and I was pleased to have been able to show him something which I knew (by experience of that city) they could not produce in Berlin. Three days later I went over to the same hospitable grill-room for a chop, and told the gifted grill-cook (the French, in former centuries, had a proverb, "Anyone may learn to be a cook, but one must be born a 'rotisseur'") of the admiration he had excited in the Emperor William's friend. "Yes, sir," he said, "I fancy he did like it, for he came here by himself yesterday and the day before, and took the same grills and stout." Von Wissman was staying at the German Embassy, but was drawn all the way to South Kensington by the sweet savour of the grill-room—an instance of what the physiologists call "positive chemotaxis."

What I have here written on food and cookery is no "gourmet's" praise of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, nor is it an expression of a mere personal preference. It is a protest, based on scientific grounds, against the neglect of one of the bulwarks of health—the honest traditional cookery which flourished in London forty years ago.



CHAPTER X

SMELLS AND PERFUMES

The old saying, "De gustibus non disputandum," is based upon the fact that both liking and the repulsion evinced by human beings for different odours (including those odours which we call flavours) are not matters of general agreement. Thus the smells of garlic and of onions, and even of assafoetida, are to many men among the most attractive and appetising in existence—to very many they are, on the other hand, repulsive. High game, a certain kind of putrid fish ("Bombay ducks"), and again rotten cheese are attractive to many men and offensive to as many more. Many animals revel in the smell and flavour of carrion, and even of manure, which they devour. There are well-known flowers which attract insects, not by the possession of the sweet perfumes appreciated and extracted by mankind, but by a smell like that of putrid meat, which so far misleads blue-bottle flies as to cause them to lay their eggs on the reeking blossom. So diverse are the tastes of men and animals in these matters that it is remarkable when we find agreement among them, as, for instance, in the attraction for butterflies of those delicate scents which also are agreeable to ourselves in such flowers as the rose, the jasmine, the heliotrope and the honeysuckle.

There seems to be no rule or principle at work by which smells can be definitely classed as either pleasant or unpleasant. Even perfumes carried by some of the inhabitants of Western Europe with the intention of making themselves attractive to their fellow-citizens are often repulsive to a certain proportion of those who come near them, as, for instance, is the case with the extract of the East Indian herb "patchouli." In regard to our other senses there is a general agreement amongst mankind, which extends also to all animals, as to what is agreeable and what is disagreeable. There are definite mathematical laws as to harmony and melody in sound and colour which affect animals and ourselves to a large extent similarly. Sweets are agreeable and bitters are disagreeable, though it is the fact that the snail, which loves sugar, recoils from saccharine, and there are "mites" (Acari) which feed with avidity on bitter strychnine! Excess of heat and of cold is disliked by animals and all men, whilst the sense of touch is pleasurably or painfully affected in much the same way in most men and animals, more than is the case with regard to any other of the senses. The sense of smell depends upon immediate and personal experience of "association" for the determination of pleasure or pain, attraction or repulsion, as the result of its being called into operation. It is a very general experience that odours are more efficient in arousing memory than are mere colour effects or sounds. Not only in animals with acutely developed olfactory powers, but also in man, an odour—a peculiar perfume—will start a whole chain of reminiscence when sight and sound have failed to do so. It is due to this close association with memory (conscious or unconscious) that an odour is agreeable or disagreeable.

In itself an odour is neither attractive nor repulsive. The acrid fumes of sulphur, chlorine, ammonia, and such bodies are not simply "odours" but corrosive chemical vapours, which act painfully upon the nerves of common sensation within the air-passages of the nose and throat and not exclusively, if at all, on the terminations of the olfactory nerves. An odour—that which acts on the special nerves of smell distributed in chambers of the nose—acquires its attractive or its repulsive quality only as the result of mental association with what is beneficial (suitable food, mates, friends, safety, home, the nest), or with what is injurious (unsuitable food, poison, enemies, danger, strange surroundings, solitude). Hence it is intelligible that the man accustomed to garlic or onions in his food is strongly attracted by their smell. So too the man whose tribe or companions have learnt by necessity to eat slightly putrid meat, fish, and cheese is attracted by their odour, though for others these odours are associated rather with what is poisonous and injurious. The dislike of the smell of sewer-gas and foul accumulations of refuse was not known to former generations of men (even in European cities a couple of hundred years ago) any more than it is to-day to the more unfortunate poorer classes, to many modern savages, to hyenas, and several other animals and birds which inhabit lairs and caves which they make foul. The odour of putrescence has become actually painful and almost intolerable to the more cleanly classes of mankind, owing to the association with it, as the result of education, of fear of disease and poisoning. Either conscious or unconscious association of an odour with what is held, either as the result of tradition or through personal experience, to be beneficial and of pleasant memory, or, on the contrary, injurious and of painful connection, determines man's liking for and choice or rejection of, odours and flavours. One can account with fair success on this basis for one's own preferences and dislikes in the matter.

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, oily skins give off various aromatic smells, none of which are valued by man. Toads have distinct odours, and one kind (Pelobates fuscus, or the heel-clawed toad), common in Europe, but not British, is known locally as the garlic toad on account of its smell. There are amongst carnivorous mammals various smells allied to that of civet which are not so agreeable to man as that substance; for instance, the odour of the fox and of the badger, and yet more celebrated, the terrible, awe-inspiring smell of the fluid emitted in self-defence by the skunk from a sac in the hinder part of the body. Horses, cows, goats, sheep, and the giraffe have their distinctive odours. Many of the herbivorous animals secrete a colourless fluid from large glands opening on or near the feet, and also from a gland in front of the eye (similar glands occur in other strange positions), which has not a smell familiar to man—that is to say, not one which has been recognised and described—yet seems to be readily "smelt" by the animals of its own kind. The bats—especially the large frugivorous bats—have a very unpleasant, frowsy smell.

An important fact about animal smells is that many which we might be inclined to attribute to the animal which diffuses them, are really due to the fermentative or putrefactive action of bacteria which swarm on the skin and in the intestines of animals. It is often difficult to decide how far a peculiar animal odour is due directly to a substance secreted by the animal, and how far the odour of that substance is modified or even entirely produced by the chemical changes set up in secretions of the body-surface by bacteria. Several distinct repulsive smells liable to occur on the human body are due to want of cleanliness in destroying bacteria by proper antiseptics. The fatty and waxy secretions of the skin are often decomposed by bacteria, even before complete extrusion from the glands in which they are formed, whilst the decomposition of food in the mouth and intestines by bacteria alters materially both the natural odour of the animal's breath and the smell of the intestinal contents. In young and healthy animals in natural conditions there is some check—it is not easy to say what—upon the putrefactive activities of the omnipresent bacteria. The skin of a healthy young animal has a pleasant odour, and its breath (notably in the case of the cow and the giraffe) is naturally sweet-smelling. The same should be the case, under perfectly healthy conditions, with human beings.

There is one important cause of animal odours and flavours upon which I have not hitherto touched. Many animals acquire an odour or flavour directly from the food upon which they feed. Certain odorous bodies are in the food and are taken up into the blood of the consuming animal unchanged, and are then thrown out by secreting glands on the skin. This is the case with the odorous substance of onions. People do not smell of onions after they have eaten them in consequence of particles of onion remaining in the mouth. The volatile odoriferous matter of the onion is absorbed into the blood. It passes out first through the lungs and later through the small fat-forming glands in the skin. It is difficult to ascertain how far animals derive their odours in this way in a complete state from their food, and how far they chemically construct them afresh by their own activity. No doubt both processes occur; but in plants the odorous bodies are built up entirely by the chemical action of the plant itself upon simple salts of carbonic acid, ammonia and nitrates. Animals can certainly take highly elaborated chemical bodies into their digestive organs without destroying them and absorb them unchanged into the blood and deposit them in the tissues. Thus the canary is made to take up the red colour of cayenne pepper and deposit it in the feathers. Thus the green oysters of Marennes acquire their colour from minute blue plants (diatoms) on which they feed. And thus, too, the canvas-backed ducks of the United States take into their tissues the odorous matter of celery, and our own grouse the flavour of heather, whilst fish-eating birds and whales in this way acquire a fishy taste. So, too, the flounders and the eels of the Thames, and even salmon in muddy rivers, acquire a taste like the smell of river mud. It is probable that many of the odours of animals (but by no means all) are thus derived directly from their food, or are produced by very slight changes of the odorous bodies absorbed in food. Mutton and beef owe their savour in some degree to the scents of the grasses on which sheep and oxen feed. And it is not improbable that the sheep-like smell which the Chinese detect in the European, comes to the latter direct from his general use of the sheep as food.

Plants are the great chemical manufacturers in the world of life, and second to them come our human industrial and scientific chemists. And though we must claim for animals some power of manufacturing distinct odorous bodies from inodorous nutritive matter assimilated by them, it is probable that in many cases the odour which is characteristic of an animal is derived by no very complicated change from odorous bodies existing in its habitual food.

A curious case of a substance valued as perfume by civilised man, and yet coming from a source whence sweet odours would hardly be expected, is that which is known as "ambergris," or "ambre gris" (grey amber). It is still used in the manufacture of esteemed perfumes, and is sold at five guineas the ounce. It is found floating on the surface of the ocean, and is a concretion of imperfectly digested matter from the intestine of a whale—probably the sperm-whale. It is a grey, powdery substance, and in it are embedded innumerable fragments of the horny beaks and sucker-rings of cuttle-fishes—creatures which form the chief food of the sperm-whale and other toothed whales. I have already mentioned above that one of our common cuttle-fishes (the Eledone moschata) has a strong odour of musk, and it is possible that ambergris owes its perfume to the musk-like scent of the cuttle-fish eaten by the whale in whose intestine it is formed. Another "smell" which is extremely mysterious is that produced by two quartz-pebbles, or even two rock-crystals, or two pebbles of flint or of corundum, when rubbed one against the other. A flash of light is seen, and this is accompanied by a very distinct smell, like that given out by burning cotton-wool. It is demonstrated—by careful chemical cleaning before the experiment—that this is not due to the presence of any organic matter on or in the stones or crystals used. It seems to be an exception to the rule that "odours" (as distinct from pungent vapours or gases) are only produced by substances formed by plants or animals. Perhaps that is not so completely a rule as I was inclined to think. It is true that one can distinguish the "smells" of chlorine, of bromine, and of iodine from one another. And there are statements current as to the distinctive smells of metals—though they may possibly be due to the action of the metals on organic matter. In any case it seems, according to our present knowledge, that the smell given out by the rubbing of pieces of silica (quartz, flint, etc.) is due to particles of silica (oxide of silicon) volatilised by the heat of friction, which are capable of acting specifically on the olfactory sense-organ.



CHAPTER XI

KISSES

"Among thy fancies, tell me this, What is the thing we call a kiss? I shall resolve ye what it is."

—Robert Herrick

Kissing is an extremely ancient habit of mankind coming to us from far beyond the range of history, and undoubtedly practised by the remote animal-like ancestors of the human race. Poets have exalted it, and in these hygienic days doctors have condemned it. In the United States they have even proposed to forbid it by law, on the ground that disease germs may be (and undeniably are in some cases) conveyed by it from one individual to another. But it is too deep-rooted in human nature, and has a significance and origin too closely associated with human well-being in the past, and even in the present, to permit of its being altogether "tabooed" by medical authority.

There are two kinds of "kissing" practised by mankind at the present time—one takes the form of "nose-rubbing"—each kiss-giver rubbing his nose against that of the other. The second kind, which is that familiar to us in Europe, consists in pressing the lips against the lips, skin, or hair of another individual, and making a short, quick inspiration, resulting in a more or less audible sound. Both kinds are really of the nature of "sniffing," the active effort to smell or explore by the olfactory sense. The "nose-kiss" exists in races so far apart from one another as the Maoris of New Zealand and the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions. It is the habit of the Chinese, of the Malays, and other Asiatic races. The only Europeans who practise it are the Laplanders. The lip-kiss is distinguished by some authorities as "the salute by taste" from nose-rubbing, which is "the salute by smell." The word "kiss" is connected by Skeat with the Latin "gustus," taste; both words signify essentially "choice." But it would be a mistake to regard the lip-kiss as merely an effort to taste in the strict sense, since the act of inspiration accompanying it brings the olfactory passages of the nose into play. Lip-kissing is frequently mentioned in the most ancient Hebrew books of the Bible, and it was also the method of affectionate salutation among the Ancient Greeks. Primarily both kinds of kissing were, there can be no doubt, an act of exploration, discrimination, and recognition dependent on the sense of smell. The more primitive character of the kiss is retained by the lovers' kiss, the mother's kissing and sniffing of her babe, and by the kiss of salutation to a friend returning from or setting out on a distant journey. Identification and memorising by the sense of smell is the remote origin and explanation of those kisses. The kissing of one another by grown-up men as a salutation was abandoned in this country as late as the eighteenth century. "'Tis not the fashion here," says a London gentleman to his country-bred friend in Congreve's "Way of the World." But we have, most of us, witnessed it abroad, and perhaps been unexpectedly subjected to the process, as I once was by an affectionate scientific colleague. Independently of the more ordinary practice of kissing—there is the "ceremonial kiss"—the kissing of hands, or of feet and toes, which still survives in Court functions—whilst the Viennese and the Spaniards, though they no longer actually carry out their threat, habitually startle a foreigner by exclaiming—"I kiss your hands." The Russian Sclavs are the most profuse and indiscriminate of European peoples in their kissing. I have seen a Russian gentleman about to depart on a journey "devoured" by the kisses of his relations and household retainers, male and female. Among the poor in rural districts in Russia this excessive habit of kissing leads to the propagation of the most terrible ulcerative disease among innocent people—as related by Metchnikoff in the lectures on modern hygiene which he gave in London some seven or eight years ago (published by Heinemann).

We may take it, then, that the act of kissing is primarily and in its remote origin an exploration by the sense of smell, which has either lost its original significance, and become ceremonial, or has, even though still appealing to the sense of smell, ceased to be (if, indeed, it ever was so) consciously and deliberately an exercise of that sense. This leads us to the very interesting subject of the sense of smell in man and in other animals. There is no doubt that the sense of smell is not so acute in man as it is in many of the higher animals, and even in some of the lower forms, such as insects. It is the fact that so far as we can trace its existence and function in animals, the sense of smell is of prime importance as distinguishing odours which are associated either with objects or conditions favourable to the individual and its race, or, on the other hand, hostile and injurious to it. It never reaches such an extended development as a source of information or general relation of the individual to its surroundings as do the senses of sight, hearing and touch. It depends for its utility on the existence of odorous bodies which are not very widely present, and are far from universal accompaniments of natural objects. Apart from some pungent mineral gases, all odorous bodies are of organic origin. Even as recognised by the less acute olfactory sense of man, the number and variety of agreeable and of disagreeable scents, produced by various species of animals and plants, is very considerable. But there is no doubt that the number and variety discriminated by such animals as dogs and many of the other hairy, warm-blooded beasts is far greater. The nature of the particles given off by odorous bodies which act on the nerve-endings of the organs of smell of animals, is remarkable. They are volatile; that is to say, they are thrown off from their source and float in the air in a state of extreme subdivision. Unlike the particles which act upon the nerves of taste, they are not necessarily soluble in water, and though often spread through and carried by liquids, are in fact rarely dissolved in water. The dissolved particles which act upon the nerves of taste can be distinguished by man into four groups—sweet, sour, bitter, and saline. But no such classification of "smells" is possible. As a rule mankind confuses the "taste" of things with their accompanying "smell." The finer flavours of food and drink not included in the four classes of tastes are really due to odoriferous particles present in the food or drink, which act on the terminations of the olfactory nerves in the recesses of the nose, and excite no sensation through the nerves of taste.

The part of the brain from which the nerves of smell arise is of relatively enormous size in the lower vertebrates—as much as one fifth of the volume of the entire brain in fishes—a fact which seems to indicate great importance for the sense of smell in those forms. Even in the mammals (the hairy, warm-blooded, young-suckling beasts) the size of the olfactory lobes of the brain and of the olfactory nerves, and the labyrinthine chambers of the nose on which the nerves are spread, is very large, as one may see by looking at a mammal's skull divided into right and left halves. And it seems immoderately large to us—to man—because, after all, so far as our conscious lives are concerned, the sense of smell has very small importance. Yet man has a very considerable set of olfactive chambers within the nostrils and has large olfactory nerves. Not rarely men and women are found who are absolutely devoid of the sense of smell, and the same thing occurs with domesticated cats and dogs. In these cases the olfactory lobes of the brain are imperfectly developed. It is found that men in this condition suffer but little inconvenience in consequence. We are able, through their statements, to ascertain what parts of the savoury qualities of food and drink belong to taste and what to smell. Such individuals do not perceive perfumes, the bouquet of wine, or the fragrance of tobacco, nor can they appreciate the artistic efforts of a good cook. But they are spared the pain of foul smells, and possibly in this way they may incur some danger in civilised life through not being able to detect the escape of sewer-gas or of coal-gas into a house, or the putrid condition of ice-stored fish, birds, and meat. A friend of my own, who is devoid of the sense of smell, inherited this defect from his father, and has transmitted it to some of his children. I was surprised to find in conversing with him how often I alluded to smells, either pleasant or unpleasant, when (as we had agreed he should) he would interrupt me and say that my remark had no meaning for him.

Some have a far more acute sense of smell than others, and again some men, probably without being more acutely endowed in that way, pay more attention to smells, and use the memory of them in description and conversation. Guy de Maupassant is remarkable as a writer for his abundant introduction of references to agreeable and mysterious perfumes, and also to repulsive odours. But some men certainly have an exceptionally acute sense of smell, and can, on entering an empty room, recognise that such and such a person has been there by the faint traces—not of perfumery carried by the visitor—but of his individual smell or odour. This brings us to one of the most important facts about odorous bodies and the sense of smell, namely, that not only do the various species of animals (and plants) each have their own odour—often difficult or impossible for man, with his aborted olfactory powers, to distinguish—but that every individual has its own special odour. As to how far this can be considered a universal disposition is doubtful. It is probable that the power of discriminating such individual odours is limited (even in the case of dogs, where it is sometimes very highly developed), to a power of discriminating the distinctive smells of the individuals of certain species of animals, and not of every individual of every species. Everyone knows of the wonderful power of the bloodhound in tracking an individual man by his smell, but dogs of other breeds also often possess what seems to us extraordinary powers of the kind. On a pebbly beach I pick up one smooth flint pebble as big as a walnut. It is closely similar to thousands of others lying there. I hold it in my hand without letting my fox-terrier see it, and then I throw it. It drops some eighty yards off among the other pebbles, and I could not myself find it again. But the dog runs forward, notes vaguely by ear and by eye the spot where it strikes, and then commences a systematic circling within about ten yards of the spot. In half a minute he pounces with the utmost assurance on to one selected stone, and brings it to me. It is invariably the stone which had been in my hand, unseen by the dog, thrown by me, and detected by the smell I have communicated to it.

Not only is the discrimination of individuals by the sense of smell a very astonishing thing, but so also is the obvious fact that the total amount of odoriferous matter which is sufficient to give a definite and discriminative sensation through the organ of smell is of a minuteness beyond all calculation or conception. These two facts—the almost infinite individual diversity of smell and the almost infinite minuteness of the particles exciting it—render it very difficult to form a satisfactory conclusion as to the nature of those particles. It has been from time to time suggested that the end organs of the olfactory nerves may be excited, not by chemically active particles, but by "rays," olfactive undulations comparable to those of light. Physicists have not yet been able to deal with the problem, but the recent discoveries and theories as to radio-active bodies such as radium may possibly lead to some more plausible theory as to the diffusion and minuteness of odorous particles than any which has yet been formulated. An example of the minuteness of odoriferous particles is afforded by a piece of musk which for ten years in succession has given off into the changing air of an ordinary room "particles" causing a readily recognised smell of musk, and yet is found at the end of that time to have lost no weight, that is to say, no weight which can be appreciated by the finest chemical balance. An analogy (I say only an analogy, a resemblance) to this is furnished by a pinch of the salt known as radium chloride, no bigger than a rape-seed, and enclosed in a glass tube, which will continue for months and years to emit penetrating particles producing continuously without cessation most obvious luminous and electrical effects upon distant objects, the particles being so minute that no loss of weight can be detected in the pinch of salt from which they are given off.

The sense of smell is of service to animals—

(1) In avoiding enemies and noxious things.

(2) In tracing and following and discriminating prey or other food.

(3) In recognising members of their own species and individuals of their own herd or troop, and in finding their own young and their own nests.

(4) In seeking individuals of the opposite sex at the breeding season.

It is in connection with the last of these services that we come across some of the most curious observations as to the production and perception of odorous particles. Butterflies and moths and some other insects have olfactory organs in the ends of the antennae and the "palps" about the mouth. The perfumes of flowers have been developed so as to attract insects by the sense of smell, as their colours have been also developed to attract insects by the eye. The insects serve the flowers by carrying the fertilizing pollen from one flower to another, and thus promoting cross-fertilization among separate individual plants of the same species. But probably concurrently with this has grown up the production of perfume by the scales on the wings of moths and butterflies—perfumes which have the most powerful attraction for the opposite sex of the same species. Curiously enough (for these perfumes might very well exist without being detected by man) some of the perfumes produced by butterflies are "smellable" by man. That of the green-veined white is described as resembling the agreeable odour of the lemon verbena. It is produced by certain scales on the front border of the hinder wings of the male insects, and not at all by the females, who are, however, attracted by it, and flutter around the sweet-smelling male. Other male butterflies produce a scent like that of sweet briar, others like honeysuckle, others like jasmine, and so attract the females. Other butterflies are known which produce repulsive odours, and so protect themselves from being eaten by birds and lizards. Again, there are moths (for instance, the emperor moth, Saturnia), the females of which produce a perfume which attracts the males, and is of far-reaching power. The French entomologist, Fabre, placed one of these female moths in a box covered with net-gauze, and left it in a room with open window, facing the countryside. In less than an hour the room was full of male emperor moths—more than a hundred arrived, although none had been previously visible in the neighbourhood. They crowded over the box, and even afterwards, when the female moth had been removed, the perfume remained in the box, and the male moths eagerly sought it. The perfume must have carried far from the room where the female was, out into the woods where it was perceived, and followed up to its source by the male moths.

Such perfumes are very generally produced by little pockets or glands in the skin, the secretion having, in the case of insects, birds and mammals, an oily nature. In mammals they are largely produced by both males and females, and serve to attract the sexes to one another. Hairs are situated close to the minute odoriferous glands and serve an important part in accumulating and diffusing the characteristic perfume. Musk and civet are of this nature, and it is a significant fact that these substances are used as perfumes by human beings. It would seem as though mankind had lost either the power of satisfactorily perceiving the perfumes naturally produced by the human skin, or that the production of such perfumes had for some reason diminished. Either condition would account for the use by mankind of the perfumes of other animals and of flowers. There are a variety of odorous substances produced by different parts of the human body, of which some are agreeable and others disagreeable. One of the most curious facts in regard to odorous bodies is the close resemblance between agreeable and repulsive odours, and the readiness with which the judgment of human beings may pronounce the same odour agreeable at one period or place, and disagreeable at another. There also seems to be a "dulling" of the power to perceive an odour which is a consequence of constant exposure to that odour. Thus the Chinese say that Europeans all smell unpleasantly, the odour resembling that of sheep, although we do not observe it; whilst Europeans notice and dislike the smell of the negro, a smell of the existence of which he is unaware. The blood of animals, including that of man, has, when freshly shed, a smell peculiar to the species, which has not, however, any resemblance to that of the skin or of the waxy glands of the same animal.