Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/157

Rh covered with sparkling pearls of dew, a fresher and balmier fragrance exhales from every plant. It is the same after a light shower. Vegetation gains heightened tints, at the same time that it diffuses more fragrant waves of perfume. We remark an effect of the same kind in the physiological phenomenon of taste. The saliva serves as an excellent vehicle for diffusing the odorous principles; then the movements of the tongue, spreading that fluid over the whole extent of the cavity of the mouth, and thus enlarging the evaporating surface, are clearly of a kind to aid the dispersion of the odorous principles, which, as we have seen, take a considerable part in the perception of tastes.

Now, in the phenomenon of smell, air acts in the place of water. It seizes the odorous particles and brings them into contact with the pituitary membrane. It is the vehicle, the solvent, of those extremely subtile atoms which, acting on the delicate fibres of the nerve, produce in it a special movement, which translates itself into the most varied sensations. Oxygen, and the existence in that gas of a certain proportion of odorous molecules, are the two essential conditions of this phenomenon.

Such is, at least, the result of earlier experiments, and of those performed of late years by Nicklès. A curious fact, well worthy of attention, is the remarkable diffusibility and degree of subdivision exhibited by some odorous substances. Ambergris just thrown up on the shore spreads a fragrance to a great distance, which guides the seekers after that precious substance. Springs of petroleum-oil are scented at a very considerable distance. Bartholin affirms that the odor of rosemary at sea renders the shores of Spain distinguishable long before they are in sight. So, too, every one knows that a single grain of musk perfumes a room for a whole year, without sensibly losing weight. Haller relates that he has kept papers for forty years perfumed by a grain of amber, and that they still retained the fragrance at the end of that time. He remarks that every inch of their surface had been impregnated by $1/2691064000$ of one grain of amber, and that they had perfumed for 11,600 days a film of air at least a foot in thickness. Evidently the material quantity of the odorous principle contained in a given volume of such air is so minute as to elude imagination. We can readily conceive how philosophers cite such instances to give a notion of the divisibility of matter.

In fact, we are now considering matter emitted by odorous bodies. This shows that they do not act as centres of agitation, occasioning vibrations which pass in waves to our organs, to exert on them a purely dynamic influence. This giving off of odorous matter, with the necessary aid of oxygen in the atmosphere, proves, too, that odors are in no respect comparable to light or heat, which one may regard in an abstract way, in the immaterial and ethereal space which is the region of their motion, as proper forces, and acting from a distance. Odors, to be perceived, must be taken up by oxygen, and borne by it