Irish Wit.—“Please your honor, is a thing lost when you know where it is?” said an Irish footman to his master.
“To be sure not, you booby.”
“Och! thank your honor for that; the de’il of harm then, for the new copper takettle’s at the bottom of the well!”
MERRY’S MUSEUM.
VOLUME III.—No. 5.
Smelling.
I propose to give my readers some remarks upon the five senses; and I shall begin with smelling. The seat of this sense is the nose, and the chief instrument by which it operates is a soft membrane, lining the interior of the nostrils. This is covered over with an infinite number of organs, too delicate to be seen by the naked eye, called the olfactory nerves. As the brain is the seat of the mind, these nerves extend to it, and convey to that organ every impression that is made upon them. The nerves are like sentinels or messengers stationed in all parts of the body, whose duty it is to communicate to the seat of power—to the brain, and thus to the intellect—everything that happens to the body. Thus, if you pinch your finger, or stub your toe, or put your hand in the fire, or taste of an apple, the nerves carry the story to the mind; and thus it is that we feel and find out what is going on.
So it is with the olfactory nerves; they have the power of perceiving what effluvia is in the air, and they tell the mind of it. At first thought, it might not seem that smelling was a very important sense. The lady in the preceding picture appears to think that the nose is made only that she may enjoy the perfume of the rose; and there are others who take a very different view of the matter. I once knew a fellow who insisted upon it that there were more bad smells than good ones in the world, and therefore he said that the sense of smelling was a nuisance, as it brought more pain than pleasure. I am inclined to think that this view was not singular, for I know several people who go about with their noses curled up, as if some bad odor was always distressing them. I make it a point, when I meet such discontented people, to cross over, and go along on t’other side of the way.
But, however others may feel, I maintain that the nose is, on the whole, a good thing—that smelling is a convenient sense, and that we could not get along very well without it. Let us consider the matter.
It must be remarked, in the first place, that in man, as well as animals, the sense of smelling is placed very near the sense of taste and the organs of eating. We may, therefore, infer that smelling is a guide to us in the choice of food; that what is of a good flavor, in general, is wholesome, and that what is of an offensive smell is unwholesome. The fact, doubtless, is, that we abuse the sense of smelling so much by the artificial tastes we cultivate, by eating spices and pickles, and a great variety of condiments, that it ceases to aid us as much as nature intended it should. Brutes, who never eat cooked dishes, composed of twenty different ingredients, have not their senses thus blunted and corrupted. The cow, the sheep, the horse, all are guided, as they graze among a thousand kinds of herbs, by the certain and effectual power of smell, to choose those which are wholesome, and to reject those which are hurtful. Now if mankind were as natural and simple in their habits as these animals, no doubt the sense of smell would be a good counsellor as to what food is good and what is bad.