The Sense of Smell.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 September 1914, Page 2

The Sense of Smell.

.— + What a mervellously delicate machinery is set in motion when we smell the fragrance of a rose ! Simple as that pleasurable sensation seems to us, it involves the activity of agencies and forces that the imagination can scarcely grasp. It has been shown that the minute cells at the ends of the olfactory nerves .in the nose bear the most delicate little hairs, and it is believed that these hairs are the active agents in producing' the sense of smell. Yet when we come to inquire into the manner of operation of these cells and hairs„ we find that it is even more wonderful than the delicacy of the mechanism itself. It has been suggested that at least | one special cell and the nerve fibre connecting it with the brain may be affected by each different smell producing substance. But it would lie a somewhat-serious stretch of imagination to suppose that for each new smell of a substance yet to emerge from the retort of the chemist there is in waiting a special nerve tefltjfhal for the nose, It is more reasonable to suppose that all the hairs of the olfactory cells are affected by every smellproducing substance, and that the different qualities of smell result from difference in the frequency and form of the vibrations transmitted through those cells to tho brain. According to this view, there is something in n*iisk, something in the rose, something in the violet and the lilac, something in every substance, which produces a smell, either agreeable^r offensive, that is able so to affect the hairs and the cells of the olfactory machl tery of the nose as to set their connecting verves in vibration, and the rate^-of this vibration Varies for every different substance ! We are reminded that the differences of both sounds and colours result from variations in the rate of vibration, although sounds are produced by the air, and colours by that mysterious medium called the lumi'niferous ether. If smells also result from varying vibrations, what a surprising glimpse of the inner unity frf- Nature that fact gives us !