Page:The Kiss and its History.djvu/195

Rh get dim, and he could not see. He wished to bless his eldest son, Esau, but Jacob deceived him by clothing himself in his brother's garments, and giving himself out as the latter. Isaac then said to him: "Come near now and kiss me, my son." And he came near and kissed him, and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said: "See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed."

The sense of the smell peculiar to some one we are fond of is capable of exciting pleasure. Timkowski writes of a Mongol father that the latter time after time smelt his youngest son's head. This mark of paternal tenderness serves with the Mongols instead of kisses. In the Philippine Islands, the sense of smell is so developed that the inhabitants, by simply sniffing at a pocket-handkerchief, can tell to whom it belongs; lovers who are separated send one another presents of bits of their linen, and, in their absence, keep each other in mind by often inhaling each other's scent.

That the delicate perfume that exhales from a woman's body plays an important part in love affairs even with modern civilised nations