Memory by the Nose

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 26

Memory by the Nose

by

SUNDOWNER

SEPTEMBER 10

T is our noses and not our eyes or ears, someone has said somewhere, that link us to our past. Though it would have been safer to say "link some of us to our past,’ the statement must be true of at least half the human race.

Because noses are grosser organs than eves and ears we

are not so prone to boast of their powers; and when we do boast we are usually deceiving ourselves or trying to deceive others. Above a certain range of olfactory consciousness, noses are not clear reporters; but we are very unfortunate if they refuse to say anything at all. The usual experience must be an acute awareness of what is unpleasant, and a ciminishing, but seldom vanished, awareness of everything above ‘that level. Animals-I am very doubt- : ful if the same can be said of primitive "men, though it often is-can follow a scent almost as easily as we can follow the white line on a sealed road. My dog, who is not encouraged to use his nose, and descends-from a line of eyeworkers, can follow my track at great speed half an hour after I have left it. Even Elsie, who is ten years old, and has spent her 3650 days filling her belly and emptying it again-and never, the experts insist, sleeping for more than a few minutes ai a time-even Elsie can follow her calf as fast as I can walk a quarter of an hour after it has wandered out of sight. If the calf goes away with Betty while I am feeding Elsie in the garden, Elsie will track it down as soon as I release her, following its exact route, not always without calling, but without getting any reply that I can hear; and certainly without taking

a bee-line in the calf’s direction if she has heard anything unheard by me. It is true that men can survive, very easily and very comfortably, without the assistance of their noses, but I hope that I personally will never be required to do'so. I am writing this note by! an open window only six feet from a wattle tree in full bloom, and not much more than 30 feet from a row of hyacinths in bloom. I know that both are giving off fragrance as freely as the flowering currant at the other end of the gable and the geraniums along the wall; but a high wind is blowing and carrying all those delights away. Winds blow so often in New Zealand, and so boisterously, that many flowering things have a feeble scent and many strong scents never reach us; but when they do strike my nose they carry me back through all the years since I first became conscious of them, It is not just a memory, but the active enjoyment of a freshly-stimu-lated sense capable of recalling sights and sounds and smells, and even other unrelated physical experiences that cannot be repeated. As I painted my new cowshed last week I lived in every new room I have ever occupied while the paint was still fresh, and sailed again on more than one ship. The cabbages that are now cooking in the kitchen are bringing back other kitchens, with their warmth and steam and anticipatory delights of 50, 60 and nearly 70 years ago. Artists and musicians may have a different story to tell. Saints and sages may refuse such stimulations, crush them, despise them, flee from them. But I am of the earth and earthy. I have no thoughts, and no memories, no (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) aspirations, and no pieties, that are not coloured by and mingled with the ground-swell of sense. My nose may not be my teacher or my preacher, It is my historian and my reporter, my prompter, nad often, very often, my peacemaker. *k * : *

SEPTEMBER 12

HAVE not yet abandoned hope that science some day, though not before I die, will produce a tail-less sheep. I might as sensibly, Jim tells me, hope for a six-legged horse or a two-headed dog. A sheep without a tail, he says, would be a biological monstrosity- a

freak that would not reproduce or be reproducible.

Such creatures are no doubt born at intervals already, but they are pre-natal casualties with, at most, one life span. When I point to polled Herefords and Shorthorns, and especially to polled Merinos, Jim just laughs at my mental confusion. I know that it is a scientific laugh, and my hope as unscientific as gathering figs off thistles. But I cling to it. If nature has provided the raw material for the experiments with horns-against what would appear to be the evolutionary advantage of horns-I will go on hoping that it will one day start at the other end of a sheep and evolve tailless rumps. It has, after all, got rid of nails or claws on the fingers of whales; converted nails into hoofs in horses, cattle, pigs and deer; left claws on the thumbs of bats, but removed them from the fingers. To my finite intelligence and almost infinite ignorance it seems a very small effort to eliminate the now quite useless tail of a sheep; or, what would be the same thing, eliminate it in a sufficient number of cases to allow clever, confident, blundering man to carry on from that point. =

SEPTEMBER 15

ad ;-VERYBODY knows that sheep are brainless. Compared with dogs, or even with cows, they are slow to learn and very difficult to teach. But they do learn in the end, and remember, Every sheep

I have, but one, knows where there is a hole. in the fence half-way down the hill and at what point, when I am mus-

tering them, break for it. The exception is my

oldest sheep, and my. biggest, my fattest and my dullest, my five-year-old Romney ewe who has not learnt yet how to have a lamb. She was our first pet, and when we turned her upon the hill with the others she never found her way back. Now she is never the first or the last in our little mob when we move them, never heads the others into the yards or out again, gazes at us with a vague sense of recognition when: we pass her on the hill, sometimes, in fact, approaches as if to greet us, but stops within a yard or two, looks hard, and then lumbers away. An endocrinologist would no doubt link her dullness with her barrenness, but one of its interests to me is the light it throws on the other members of the flock. When she is wondering where to go, they are gone; when she is bewildered, they know; when a single wire stops her, they are under or over. It is impossible, when we count our sheep in hundreds, to know much about individuals, When we count them in pens they individualise themselves. as sharply as the boys and girls in a school class after the first day or two. We see then that some are aggressive and some easy-going; some _ inquisitive and some incapable of more than one interest at a time; some greedy; some rough; some nervous; some alert; some resentful when they are penned, some sleepy and indifferent. I have not yet discovered a vain sheep, but they are nearly all jealous. They are not bright enough to try to attract attention, but when the spotlight reaches them they are quickly aware of it and escape as soon as they can. Let a ewe know that you are looking for her and then try to keep her under observation through the mob. That is one test of their alleged silliness. If you want another, spend a day dipping Romney ewes that have been through the same dip before. (To be continued)