By altering the food of an animal we may considerably alter all the
above-mentioned odours, scents, as well as smells; yet essentially they
will always retain their specific odoriferous type. All this is matter
of strict experience.
Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate
the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in
the aggregate constitutes the smell of the living animal. It is
altogether an excrementitious smell tempered by the scent of the animal.
That excrementitious smell we shall henceforth simply call the smell, in
contradistinction to the scent of the animal.
To return after this not very pleasant, but nevertheless necessary
digression, to our subject. Professor Yaeger found that blood, treated
by an acid, may emit the scent or the smell of the animal, according as
the acid is weak or strong. A strong acid, rapidly disintegrating the
blood, brings out the animal's smell; a weak acid, the animal's scent.
We see, then, that in every drop of blood of a certain species of
animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in
the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal
species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both
aspects of scent and smell.
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