The Brave Smell of a Stone

Abstract

Since it seems certain that volatile material only can be smelled, an explanation must be found for the fact that many non-volatile substances undoubtedly appear to emit odour. It is said, for example, that some people can smell sugar in tea or salt in soup although these solids are non-volatile and, in the undissolved state, odourless. (Andres, in response to the question: can sugar smell?, showed that it readily absorbs odours from sacks and other materials in or near which it may be stored and also that white sugar (cane or beet) may give off odour after storage for several months in tins or glass jars. More surprising still is the odour attributed to such materials as rocks, clay and metals (e. g., coins, turnings, filings)¹. It cannot be supposed that particles of these substances penetrate into the olfactory cleft and so come into contact with the olfactory mucous membrane. Whence then comes the odour?²

One had to run over the whole gamut of odours, some so faint that they embraced the nostril with a fairy kiss, others bluntly gross, of the knock-you-down order; some sweet, with a dreadful sourness; some bitter with a smack of rancid hair-oil. There were fine manly smells of the pig sty and the open drain, and these prided themselves on being all they seemed to be; but there were also feminine odours, masquerading as you knew not what, in which penny whiffs, vials of balm and opoponax, seemed to have become tainted, vaguely, with the residue of the slop-pail.

Their house had a strange, delicious smell, so unlike anything I smelt anywhere else that it used to fill my eyes with tears of mysterious pleasure. I know now that this was the odour of cigars, tobacco being a species of incense tabooed at home on the highest religious grounds. E. Gosse