Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/97

Rh however, seem to belong to the microsmatic group of animals, relying chiefly upon their vision, which is often highly perfected, particularly for distance.

Much has been made, too much perhaps, of the part played by olfaction in the sex-life, and its undoubted prominence in the coupling of four-footed animals is pointed to as an indication of its potency in mankind also. But the reasoning is fallacious. Olfactory influences predominate in these animals simply because olfaction is their principal sense.

Among birds, now, courtship and marriage are conducted without any apparent aid from olfaction, and in no group of beings, not even in mankind, is the poetic side of courtship, both before and after marriage, so highly developed and so beautifully displayed. In their love-making the birds appeal to each other through the ear in their songs, and through the eye in the nuptial splendours of the male, splendours which he parades with glorious pomp before what often seems to be, indeed, but a lackadaisical and indifferent spouse.

As we have already seen, this independence of olfactory stimuli is, so far as obvious indications go, also the case with human lovers, True, we have numerous references by poets to the