The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-21
NOSE GIVEN FULL
 SHARE OF CREDIT Sense of Smell More Valuable
 Than That of Sight VALUE IS NOT APPRECIATED Some Wonderful Feats of the Organ of Smell When Put to the Test-Far
 More Delicate Than the
 Organ of Sight.
VALUE IS NOT APPRECIATED
From Pearson,s Weekly.

From Pearson's Weekly
 Would you rather be eyeless than nose- less? Suppose, in other words that fate gave you choice between losing your sense of sight and your sense of smell which would you decide to abandon?
 Nine people out of ten would reply that they would infinitely prefer to lose their power of detecting odors than be blind The choice would be a less wise one than 1t sounds.
 People are so accustomed to take the sense of smell for granted that they hard ly notice its usefulness. Nevertheless, they use it, as a matter of fact, every instant of their waking lives, and even while asleep-when the eyes, being closed, are useless.
 Introduce a bright light into the bed room of a sound sleeper, and he will not stir; but the burnt tin smell of a bur glars dark lantern will interrupt his dreams and wake him, when not a ray from the said lantern is visible
 Since the habit of smoking became so universal, men have dulled, to some ex- tent, their nasal sensitiveness; but to this day many scientists will tell you that the nose is a more vital organ than the eyes. They prove this amazing theory by demonstrating how blind man can often distinguish the person in a room solely by the sense of smell can tell the direction of the wind-and, through it, his geographical position in an unknown country-by the sense of smell, feats which no man who possessed his eye sight alone could perform.
 MT. H. G. Wells, recently advanced the axiom in one of his stories that f a man with perfect eyesight were put in the midst of nation, all of whom were blind the former would be at an enormous disadvantage; in fact, he would become the blind mems slave.
 Dr. McPherson, writing on what he called The Miracle of Smell" states that a trained chemist can often rely more on his nose for information as to the analysis of a substance than on any of the most delicate chemical tests, whose results are, of course, only visible to the eye.
 Oil of cloves can be smelt by a skilled druggist, when diluted in S8 900 parts of water; and the old effluvium of prussic acid can be detected when .n a solution of two million parts of wa ter.
 No chemical analysis could detect this, because the results of the ch emi- cal analysis would be too faint to be seen by the eye In other words, given that a detective oh enlist had to dis cover whether a certain substance con tained prussc acid--one of the favorite poisons used by murderers-he would do 1t more readily if he were blind than if he were noseless.
 Thus, even the nose of civilized man is often more valuable to him than his eyes: and how much more does this apply to the savage, who has not dana ged his olfactory nerves by smok- ing? The natives of Peru, as many travellers have recorded, can tell in the 7 darkest night whether stranger who is approaching them is European or a negro, or an American Indian.
 A moments reflection shows that this means that every individual (without re- gard, by the way, to his personal clean 1inessD is surrounded by a sort of cloud of miraculously minute scent-particles genuine particles of actual matter, cap- able of entering the nostris and ttillat- ing the olfactory nerves. The nose sees" these particles; to the eye they are never visible even under the most powerful mi crospoe.
 The extraordinary smallness of these particles will be understood when we con- slider the fact that a tenth of a grain of musk will for years on end scent room in which it is kept in contact with the air, and, when subsequently, weighed, will be found not to have diminished in size.
 In the animal world it is, of course, plain that the loss of the nose means death, when the loss of the eyes would merely mean inconvenience. Plenty of old dogs are blind, yet can go out walks with their masters. and even hunt for game dog hardly ever uses it's eyes alone to distinguish between its master and a stranger.
 The late Dr. Romanes made some amaz- ing experiments to prove the power of smell In common dogs one or his own
 .oo1r T., bank holiday crowd in London park solely by distinguishing between the scent of his boots and that of the hundreds of other pairs of boots which had touched the ground since he passed.
 When he glued brown paper to his boots the dog could not follow him; but as soon as the tiniest hole was worn in the paper, it picked up his trail at once. Dr. Romanes even found that his dog could track him over ground previously sconfused by multitudinous tracks, crossing to and fro of aniseed scent