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Olfactory   Listen
adjective
Olfactory  adj.  (Physiol.) Of, pertaining to, or connected with, the sense of smell; as, the olfactory nerves; the olfactory cells.
Olfactory organ (Anat.), an organ for smelling. In vertebrates the olfactory organs are more or less complicated sacs, situated in the front part of the head and lined with epithelium innervated by the olfactory (or first cranial) nerves, and sensitive to odoriferous particles conveyed to it in the air or in water.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Olfactory" Quotes from Famous Books



... smell, scent; snuff, snuff up; sniff, nose, inhale. Adj. odorous, odoriferous; smelling, reeking, foul-smelling, strong- scented; redolent, graveolent[obs3], nidorous[obs3], pungent; putrid, foul. [Relating to the sense of smell] olfactory, quick-scented. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... at length, opening my eyes, I found myself lying on a bed in a middle-sized chamber, lighted by a candle, which stood on a table—an elderly man stood near me, and a yet more elderly female was holding a phial of very pungent salts to my olfactory organ. I attempted to move, but felt very stiff—my right arm appeared nearly paralysed, and there was a strange dull sensation in my head. "You had better remain still, young man," said the elderly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... fact is, her olfactory nerves becoming strongly excited, she insisted upon having a search, and after snuffing about, she came near my hiding-place, and ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... a candle, and in the course of a few minutes admitted Woodward to his herbarium. When the latter entered, he looked about him with a curiosity not unnatural under the circumstances. His first sensation, however, was one that affected his olfactory nerves very strongly. A combination of smells, struggling with each other, as it were, for predominance, almost overpowered him. The good and the bad, the pleasant and the oppressive, were here mingled up in one sickening ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... many times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna. As men, their achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but their name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance may be found in the penny scent fountains of to-day. I was smiling over this quaint olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie's book, when a tug at my arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to the workaday world. I turned sharply ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... definitely. Some believe hearing lies in the antennae. Hicks has made an especial study of a fluid filled cavity closed by a membrane that he thinks he has demonstrated to be the seat of hearing. Leydig, Gerstaecker, and others believe this same organ to be olfactory. Perhaps, after all, there is room for only one more doctor of science who will permanently settle this and a few other vexing ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... foot from Duke's nose, and the little dog's dreams began to be troubled by his olfactory nerve. This faithful sentinel, on guard even while Duke slept, signalled that alarums and excursions by parties unknown were taking place, and suggested that attention might well be paid. Duke opened one drowsy eye. What that eye ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... (e) The olfactory image is even more delicate. Some there are who are affected to illness by the memory of certain odors, while others experience the most delectable sensations by the rise of pleasing ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... tepid wash and raw fish, I am tormented by the production of a once luscious fillet deliberately rendered unfit for human consumption, and I am deprived of my now ravening appetite by the nauseating reek from the shock of whose assault I am still trying to rally my olfactory nerves. All this I endure ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... the house, a strong smell of roasted meat saluted my nostrils, causing a very unphilosophical pleasure to the olfactory nerves, a pleasure which acted very directly, too, on the gastric juices of the stomach. In plain English, I had very sensible evidence that it was not enough to transport a man to the monikin region, send him to parliament, and keep him on nuts for a week, to render him exclusively ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... past, and reckless of the future, we were enjoying the present moment in this badinage, and I was extolling the odour of the rose, as beyond every other grateful to the olfactory nerves of man, a lively, flippant little personage came up, and accosted the Brahmin with the familiarity of an acquaintance. My companion immediately introduced me to him, and at the same time gave me to understand that this was the great Reffei, one of the most distinguished ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... of the myriad flowers that hide in the depths of the thickets. She has to discover the honey and pollen that lurk in the labyrinths of the nectaries and in the most secret recesses of the anthers. And yet her eyes and olfactory organs are like the eyes and organs of the infirm, compared with those of the male. Were the drones almost blind, had they only the most rudimentary sense of smell, they scarcely would suffer. They have nothing to do, no prey ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... for the first time empty. Lopepe, which I had formerly seen a stream running from a large reedy pool, was also dry. The hot salt spring of Serinane, east of Lopepe, being undrinkable, we pushed on to Mashue for its delicious waters. In traveling through this country, the olfactory nerves are frequently excited by a strong disagreeable odor. This is caused by a large jet-black ant named "Leshonya". It is nearly an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same manner as the skunk. The scent must be as volatile as ether, for, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... future it may be different; and that, consequently, by the side or in the stead of our modern science, the work of our eyes and hands—and also of our words—there might have been constituted, there may still be constituted, sciences entirely and extraordinarily new—auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sciences, and even others derived from other kinds of sensations which we can neither foresee nor conceive because they are not, for the moment, differentiated in us. Outside the matter we know, a very special matter fashioned of vision and touch, there may exist other matter with ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... distance from the sea, and about three leagues from Coruna. It is surrounded on three sides by lofty hills. The weather during the greater part of the day had been dull and lowering, and we found the atmosphere of Betanzos insupportably close and heavy. Sour and disagreeable odours assailed our olfactory organs from all sides. The streets were filthy—so were the houses, and especially the posada. We entered the stable; it was strewed with rotten sea-weeds and other rubbish, in which pigs were wallowing; huge ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... a vulture that has just been feeding on carrion, you must expect that your olfactory nerves will be somewhat offended with the rank effluvia from his craw; just as they would be were you to dissect a citizen after the Lord Mayor's dinner. If, on the contrary, the vulture be empty at the time you commence the operation, there will be no offensive smell, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... smell, distinguishing the dead from the living? Here, all are alive; and the Bee pierces her way as through a row of corpses. If I am told that the smell of the Solenii may differ from that of the Osmiae, I shall reply that such extreme subtlety in the insect's olfactory apparatus seems to me a rather far-fetched supposition. Then what is my explanation of the two facts? The explanation? I have none to give! I am quite content to know that I do not know, which at least spares me many vain lucubrations. And so I do not know how the Osmia, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... useless to think of the sense of smell. Has the Processional any olfactory powers or has he not? I do not know. Without giving a positive answer to the question, I can at least declare that his sense of smell is exceedingly dull and in no way suited to help him find his way. This is proved, in my experiments, by a number of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent, which made the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was long rather than oval, and the scientific ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... that she had had an hallucination of hearing, together with olfactory trouble. I prefer saying that she had received the visit of grace. Tears of joy bathed her face and she remained there, sobbing ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... Hiss and Mrs. Patterson of Massachusetts were not absent. Joseph's rubicund complexion, brassy and distinctly Know-Nothing look, and nasal organ well developed by his experience on the olfactory committee, were just what might have been expected. The 'make up' of Mrs. P., a bright brunette, was capital, and she looked the woman, if not the lady, to perfection. The two appeared in a handsome livery buggy, paid for, we suppose, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... of the male Crustacea consists not unfrequently in a more abundant development on the flagellum of the anterior antennae of delicate filaments which Spence Bate calls "auditory cilia," and which I have considered to be olfactory organs, as did Leydig before me, although I was not aware of it. Thus they form long dense tufts in the males of many Diastylidae, as Van Beneden also states with regard to Bodotria, whilst the females only possess them more sparingly. In the Copepoda, Claus called attention to the difference of ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller

... cannot do it at all. The young Knights thus saw that if they desired to escape drowning, they must finish the combat without further delay; the odour of the monster was excessively disagreeable to their olfactory nerves, being like the essence of ten thousand pole-cats, weasels, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... issued special instructions to check the use of firearms on the point at Riviere Ouelle, in order that the beluga might not be frightened, to the ruin of the extensive fishery that has existed there for more than two hundred years. Its sight, touch and taste are also well developed but it has no olfactory nerve and is apparently without the sense of smell. The creature has qualities that we should hardly expect. It has been tamed and almost domesticated. The enterprising Barnum exhibited in New York ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... the occupier. The parterre in front (green as the jaundiced eye of their less fortunate brother tradesmen) is enriched with some dozens of vermilion-coloured flower-pots mounted on a japanned verdigris frame, sending forth odoriferous, balmy, and enchanting gales to the grateful olfactory organs, from the half-withered stems of pining and consumptive geraniums; to complete the picture, two unique plaster casts of naked figures, the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medici, at most a foot in altitude, are placed on clumsy wooden pedestals ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... something connected with the eye, and implies that the stuff of mental images is entirely visual. The true fact of the matter is, we can image practically anything that we can sense. We may have tactual images of things touched; auditory images of things heard; gustatory images of things tasted; olfactory images of things smelled. How these behave in general and how they interact in study will engage our ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... Hannah, had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted and, in the end, to put a good face on ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... immediately awoke; and apprehending him in danger of perishing in his tower, their whole thoughts were occupied with the means of his safety. Morakanabad flew from his retirement, wiped away his tears, and cried out for water like the rest. Bababalouk, whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the skin hung in shreds from my fingers, and the blood pattered on the dark soil, that in all probability had never tasted moisture before. All this amused my pursuer vastly; it watched with the leisure of one who knows its fish will be landed in safety, and there suddenly came to me, through my olfactory nerves, a knowledge that it was speaking to me in the language of scents—the language I never understood till now was the language ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... we have evidence that infinitely smaller particles act on our nerves. When a dog stands a quarter of a mile to leeward of a deer or other animal, and perceives its presence, the odorous particles produce some change in the olfactory nerves; yet these particles must be infinitely smaller* than those of the phosphate of ammonia weighing the one-twenty-millionth of a grain. These nerves then transmit some influence to the brain of the dog, which leads to action on its part. With Drosera, the really marvellous fact is, that a plant ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... what I'm trying to say," Jake cried. "Look, why do we have any sense of smell at all? Because we have tiny olfactory nerve endings buried in the mucous membrane of our noses and throats. But we have always had the virus living there, too, colds or no colds, throughout our entire lifetime. It's always been there, anchored in the same ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... slight fall of snow on the 11th November, followed by severe frost, and the elephants were beginning to suffer from the cold. Three of them succumbed on the Lataband Kotal, much to the annoyance of the olfactory nerves of all passers-by. It was impossible to bury the huge carcasses, as the ground was all rock, and there was not wood enough to burn them. So intense was the cold that the ink froze in my pen, and I was obliged to keep my inkstand under ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... Her olfactory nerves were almost as keen as a dog's. How she loved the scent of flowers! She named many of the blossoms in the gardens about just by the odor wafted to her upon the air. And she was really a pretty sight, sitting upon the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... craving for excessive flavoring is an olfactory delirium, a pathological case, as yet unfathomed like the excessive craving for liquor, and, being a problem for the medical fraternity, it is only of secondary ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... so much about these personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to make about them that I believe is a new one. It is this. There may be a physical reason for the strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind. The olfactory nerve—so my friend, the Professor, tells me—is the only one directly connected with the hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we have every reason to believe, the intellectual processes are performed. To speak ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... stench is volatile and soon disappears; while settler's noses get used to it in a measure. Were it not for these merciful provisions, colonization in this land would be an utter impossibility for people who had olfactory nerves at all. The kauri-bug would have driven us back ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... inflammation of the membrane of the nasal cavities and air passages, which is followed by ulceration, when nature, in order to shelter this delicate tissue, and protect the olfactory nerves, throws a tough membrane over the ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... shipmates' olfactory nerves, Dane hurried on to the port which gave on the ramp now tying the Queen to Sargol's crust. But there he lingered, waiting for Van Rycke, the Cargo-master of the spacer and his immediate superior. It was early morning and now that he was out of the confinement of the ship the fresh ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... pains in the temples and other parts of the head, a tingling noise in the ear, a throbbing of the brain, especially of the temporal arteries—Symptoms of asthma, tickling coughs, visible inflations, and unusual scents affecting the olfactory nerves—Sometimes costive and sometimes relaxed—Sudden flushings of heat, and suffusions of countenance—In the night, alternate sweats and shiverings, especially down the back, which seems to feel as if water was poured down that ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... diagrammatically the brain of a Fish, a Reptile, a Bird, a Mammal, and a Man. In each case the letter A marks a side view, and the letter B a top view. The small italics throughout signify the following homologous parts: m, medulla; cb, cerebellum; op, optic lobes; cr, cerebrum and thalamus; ol, olfactory lobes. The series shows a progressive consolidation and enlargement of the brain in general, and of the cerebrum and cerebellum in particular, which likewise exhibit continually advancing structure in respect of convolution. In the case of Man, these two parts of the brain have grown to so great ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... come. The olfactory nerves remained placid, until the visitors had departed. Then she retreated to the inner cave, drew the grey shawl over her head, and awaited the ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... process of decomposition, which is the preliminary to the finding of such pearls as they may contain. There was no doubt that this would render the island and its immediate vicinity almost intolerably offensive to the olfactory nerves; but as the lagoon was to windward of the islet, and the ship was moored a mile and a half away from it, it was believed that her occupants would suffer no inconvenience from ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... How keen your scent is! It is always so with us. Your grandfather was noted for his olfactory powers. Ah, a great loss, dear Mrs. Ridd, a terrible loss to this neighbourhood! As one of our great writers says—I think it must be Milton—'We ne'er shall look upon ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... supposed either the elements, or the concealed powers who regulated them, possessed a will, views, wants, desires, similar to their own. From hence, the sacrifices imagined to nourish them; the libations poured out to them; the steams, the incense to gratify their olfactory nerves. Their superstition led them to believe these elements or their irritated movers were to be appeased like irritated man, by prayers, by humiliation, by presents. Their imagination was ransacked to discover the presents ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... the other Mr. Polton what I want," said the cabman, with his eyes still riveted on the olfactory prominence. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... is very small, compared with the spinal cord into which it is continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed—the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... Droit et l'Homme Gauche," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... inscription, 'Hence blows the breath of life', which not many visitors will believe, because, instead of a quickening breath, pestilential odors enter by the window and offend the nostrils of those whose olfactory nerve has not lost all sensitiveness.... On the opposite wall, to the west, appear the words, 'A memorial unto the destruction of the Temple'. To this day I do not know what there was to commemorate the fall of the Holy Place. The rickety rafters? Or were the little creatures swarming ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... accurately what I shall see—whether a bunch of keys or half-a-crown—when I pull it out again; and the tactile ideas are, in this case, the language which informs me of the visual ideas which will arise. So with the other senses: olfactory ideas tell me I shall find the tactile and visual phenomena called violets, if I look for them; taste tells me that what I am tasting will, if I look at it, have the form of a clove; and hearing warns me of what I shall, or may, see and touch every minute ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... was headed for the gully. His huge head hung close to the ground. At short distances his vision was microscopic in its keenness; his olfactory nerves were so sensitive that he could catch one of the big rock-ants with his ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... Without these adjuncts the repetition of these perceptions would be useless as instruments of knowledge. Avoiding a lengthened detail concerning the other senses, it will be sufficient to instance the olfactory organ. If we scent the essences of rose or jasmine, on the second presentation, they are recognised as having occurred before: should we have smelled the same perfumes from the living plants that exhale them, and by the eye noticed them, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... physiological facts, bearing upon the presence or absence of white colors in the higher animals, have lately been adduced by Dr. Ogle. It has been found that a colored or dark pigment in the olfactory region of the nostrils is essential to perfect smell, and this pigment is rarely deficient except when the whole animal is pure white. In these cases the creature is almost without smell or taste. This, Dr. Ogle believes, explains the curious case of the pigs in Virginia adduced by Mr. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Our olfactory nerves had already told us that in this lovely little seaside paradise there are such prosaic things as defective drains. This is more detectable in the evening on the beach, than elsewhere, in the daytime; but is being ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... stop at nothing. But they are not imagination, neither are they the idle fancies of an over-active brain. They are objective—just as much objective as are the smells of recognised physical objects, that those, with keenly sensitive olfactory organs, can detect, and those, with a less sensitive sense of smell, cannot detect; those, with acute hearing, can hear, and those with less acute hearing cannot hear. And yet, people are slow to believe that the seeing of the occult is as much a faculty ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... such as were then in use in the bettermost houses—for the poor were content with a hole in the roof—sat a youth of some sixteen years of age, busily attending to a large pot over the fire, from which, from time to time, savoury fumes ascended, the odour of which gladdened even the olfactory organs ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... as a stimulus to the organ of taste, and so give rise to corresponding dreams. As Radestock observes, these lower sensations do not commonly make known their quality to the sleeper's mind. They become transformed at once into visual, instead of into olfactory or gustatory percepts. That is to say, the dreamer does not imagine himself smelling or tasting, but ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... in this interesting position, it became apparent to Harry's olfactory nerves that the atmosphere was impregnated with tobacco smoke. Looking hastily up, he beheld an apparition that tended somewhat to increase the confusion of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... olfaction; odor, savor, scent; (sweet smell) fragrance, aroma, perfume, redolence; (offensive smell) stink, fetor, stench. Antonyms: inodorousness, scentlessness, anosmia. Associated Words: olfactory, reek, fume, perfume, inodorous, malodorous, odoriferous, odorous, osphresiology, osphretic, odorless, deodorize, deodorization, emanation, effluvium, sniff, whiff, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the only word of depreciation which the poets have permitted themselves. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge in 1803, notes that 'the river glideth at its own sweet will,' and if his olfactory nerves were at all distressed he has not said so in verse. Of later singers, none has been more enthusiastic about the Thames than Eliza Cook, who has told us that, though it bears no azure wave and rejoices in no leaping cascades, yet she ever loved to dwell ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... said Mrs. Samstag in quick olfactory analysis. "Eight ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of an animal is frequently surrounded by a dozen or more of them, almost as soon as it has dropped dead, although five minutes before there was not a single bird in view. Whether this power is to be attributed to the keenness of his olfactory or his visual organs, is a matter still in dispute; although it is believed, from a minute observation of its habits in confinement, to be rather owing ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... Some persons sneeze from looking up at the light sky in a morning after coming out of a dark bedroom. The olfactory nerves are brought into too great action by their sympathy with the optic nerves, or by their respective sympathies with some intervening parts, as probably with the two extremities of the lacrymal sac; that is, with the puncta lacrymalia and the nasal ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... the same variations); (3) Auditory: (a) qualitative, (b) quantitative, with studies on the sense of hearing; (4) Visual: (a) qualitative, (b) quantitative, with observations concerning the importance of this sense in the life of the frog, and (5) Olfactory: (a) qualitative, (b) quantitative. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... and met an untimely grave. We have seen several alacrans or scorpions on board, but these are said not to be poisonous. The ship is the perfection of cleanness. No disagreeable odour affects the olfactory nerves, in which it has a singular advantage over all packets. This, and having it all to ourselves, and the officers being such perfect gentlemen, and all so kind and attentive, makes our voyage so far a mere ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... peculiarly defective. Taking the above suppositions to be correct, it is of course clearly apparent that they must be guided solely by the eye in the selection of their food; for instance, when fish are stupefied or fuddled as it is termed, I do not suppose their olfactory organs are affected by the berry or drugs, used to intoxicate or kill them. I am persuaded, that small balls of paste or bread would, if offered to them at the same time, be devoured at precisely the same rate as those prepared with ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... imitative power of the word survives in the so-called onomatapoetic words, which aim simply at reproducing the sounds of nature. A second order of imitation arises through the associations of sensations. The different sensations, auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, motor, and organic have common qualities, which they share with other more complex experiences; of form, as force or feebleness; of feeling, as harshness, sweetness, and so on. It is, indeed, another case of the form-qualities to which we recurred so often ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... eat." By the time the travelers were seated, this admirable woman was in the kitchen at work. The "pat-a-pat, pat, pat, pat, pat-a-pat-a-pat" of the sifter, and the cracking and "fizzing" of the fat bacon as it fried, saluted their hungry ears, and the delicious smell tickled their olfactory nerves most delightfully. Sitting thus, entertained by delightful sounds, breathing the fragrant air, and wrapped in meditation,—or anticipation rather,—the soldiers saw the dust rise in the air, and heard the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... outset, looked as if it were in danger of never again assuming its normal tilt. She held small Pete by one chubby hand, and with a wry face he was licking out an absurd little red tongue at least twice each moment, as if uncertain as to whether his olfactory or gustatory nerves had been offended. Billy was standing with the nonchalant unconcern of one strong of stomach, and the four other little Poteets, ranging in size from Shoofly, on the floor, to Tobe, the buried, were shuffling ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... whirled round by one of my uninvited visitors. I would not have selected such a partner, but I have no choice. Smoke is said to be a disinfectant; so I smoke as I dance. For the closeness of the atmosphere, and the muskiness of mulatto girls, are not congenial to one's olfactory and respiratory organs. At last the final drop of aguardiente is drained, the music ceases, and my friends, and my friends' friends, and the strangers that were without my gate, take ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... of robins in the pear-tree,—she heard movements below stairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose, as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read them. If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it would certainly ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fleece, but now hung as a badge of trade on the door-jambs; and the frying of eggs, that have long lost their market value, with Bombay ghee and young garlic, the whole mellowed and perhaps refined by the continual vapors from open sewers. One fragrance that perhaps tickles the olfactory nerve with more delicacy than all others and might be called a perfumed "dream," comes from baking a garlic pie piping hot in the open, with Turkish Limburger as a substantial ingredient. This zephyr when in full action sets at naught the ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... Realists imagine it's an exposition of positive human nature when they've pulled down our noses to the worst parts—if there's a worse where all are useful: but the Realism of the dogs is to have us by the nose:—excite it and befoul it, and you're fearfully credible! You don't read that olfactory literature. However, friend Carling is a conciliatory carle. Three or four days of the week the lady, he says, drives to her chemist's, and there she sits in the shop; round the corner, as you enter; and sees all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our dull ears. Ants are susceptible to lights and colors unseen to our limited eyes. The emperor-moth calls its mate—so says Fabre—by means of olfactory vibrations totally uncomprehended by us. The universe is full of hues, tones, radiant phenomena that escape us, because our senses are not attuned ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... of course, that absolutely nothing in the way of abstract mental content is inferable from the mere fact that we can use intelligently words of which the meaning is abstract. It is clear that a sufficiently ingenious person could manufacture a machine moved by olfactory stimuli which, whenever a dog appeared in its neighbourhood, would say, "There is a dog," and when a cat appeared would throw stones at it. The act of saying "There is a dog," and the act of throwing stones, would in such a case be equally mechanical. Correct speech does ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... with terror from the thought of returning to town and placing himself at her mercy. Yet what option had he? While thus musing, he turned impatiently round, and saw that the shabby man and the dusty hag were engaged in an amicable game of ecarte, with those very cards which had so offended his olfactory organs. At that sight the old instinct of the gambler struggled back; and, raising himself up, he looked over the cards of the players. The miserable wretches were, of course, playing for nothing; and Losely saw at a glance that the man was, nevertheless, trying to cheat the woman! ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... whole race is distinguished. They received our people with open arms, and some of the young damsels seemed disposed to cultivate a closer intimacy with them than their ideas of propriety, or at least their olfactory nerves, would sanction. The effluvia that proceeds from their persons in the summer season is quite insufferable; it is as if you applied your nose to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... snatches, I had also ascertained, on seeing her in the door, when she thought herself yet beyond the reach of our vision, forgetting that young eyes can see further than old eyes; mine could not be deceived in the convulsive motion that carried her fore-finger and thumb to the tip of her olfactory organ, which drew up one snuff of the fragrant weed—as hurriedly as a porpoise puts his head out of water for a snuff of the sweet air of morning—when scattering the rest of the pinch to the four winds, she forgot, in her excitement, for once, to wipe the traces from her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillated my olfactory nerves. The heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating, a perfume that four thousand years had ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... stretched right across the palm, and the little finger extended to the utmost. In an instant the great secret—the secret that Darwin had studied so strenuously for years—was revealed to him. The language of animals was olfactory. The tiger spoke to him through the sense of smell—through his nose instead of his ears. It regulated and modified the odour it gave off from its body, and which worked its way out through the pores of its skin, just as human beings ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... open door of a bake-shop, and a pervading odor fills the air. I think "hot rolls," because my organ of smell—the nose—has received a stimulus which it transmits along my olfactory nerves to the brain; and there the odor is given a name—"hot rolls." The recognition of the stimulus as an odor and of that odor as "hot rolls" is consciousness in the form of thinking. But the odor ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... the movements of the ribs. The sense of touch came to be of more importance and the sense of smell of less; the part of the brain receiving tidings from hand and eye and ear came to predominate over the part for receiving olfactory messages. Finally, the need for carrying the infant about among the branches must surely have implied an intensification of family relations, and favoured the evolution ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... are that a tannery is not as pleasant to the olfactory senses as Pinaud's perfumes, but Alfred, unlike Col. Charlotte, had exposed himself to objectionable odors by working over the vats and leather by day, and thumping the tambourine by night in the big finishing room. But no complaints ever came to his ears of the unpleasant odor of ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... Chevalier. N.B. I have got a 1/8 inch object-glass, and it is grand. I have been getting on well with my beloved Cirripedia, and get more skilful in dissection. I have worked out the nervous system pretty well in several genera, and made out their ears and nostrils (27/4. For the olfactory sacs see Darwin's "Monograph of the Cirripedia," 1851, page 52.), which were quite unknown. I have lately got a bisexual cirripede, the male being microscopically small and parasitic within the sack of the female. I tell you this to boast of my species theory, for the nearest ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... coupled his request with a seeming sincerity, it was evident that he felt somewhat disappointed at the consignment. The old gentleman looked very wise upon the subject, lifted his gold-framed spectacles upon his forehead, gratified his olfactory nerves with a pinch of snuff, and then said in a cold, measured tone, "Well, if he's a nigger, I see no alternative,—the circumstances may give a coloring of severity to the law; but my opinion has always been, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... turbaned and skirted were these Moro men, their jackets fitting so tightly that some one suggested they must have grown on them, that they were "quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees or the plumage of birds." One's olfactory nerves also bore evidence that frequent ablutions or change of garments were not customary among our guests, and the fact that when shown over the ship they evinced but little interest ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense of smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in the air inhaled by the nose. The "taste" of food is mostly due to the volatile odors of it that creep up the back-stairs into the olfactory chamber. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... body of a horse, I put the flask and biscuit by his side, and departed in order to procure assistance to remove him. I recollected that a short time before, I had seen a smoke issuing from a deep ditch, and that my olfactory nerves had been saluted by a savoury smell as I passed. Guided by these indications, I retraced my steps to the spot, and found some Scotch soldiers sheltered by a hedge, very agreeably employed in cooking a quantity of beefsteaks over a wood tire, in a French ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... that any special disease has its origin in uncleansed skin as a chronic condition. That will be a small-minded reader who draws conclusions from these statements that the author is not highly in favor of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean as not to be an offence to the finest fibred olfactory nerve at close range. In the use, then, of water on the body be physiologically sensible, and not the slaves of the bath-tub ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... where wit and wine had contended for the mastery, the excited judge on the way to his carriage tumbled downstairs and, miserabile dictu, broke his nose, an accident which compelled him to confine himself to the house for some time. He reappeared, however, with a large patch on his olfactory member, which gave a most ludicrous expression to his face. On someone inquiring how this happened, he said it was the effect of his studies. "Studies!" ejaculated the inquirer. "Yes," growled the judge; "ye've heard, nae doot, about Coke upon Littleton, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... has not much to commend it as a place of residence. It is neither clean nor well built, while sights and smells the reverse of agreeable are constantly distressing the optic and olfactory nerves. And yet there are perhaps few places where an artist could find more charming subjects for his pencil—curious bits of architecture mingling with Nature in its most beautiful and grandest aspects, fine touches of brilliant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... Stockholm.... I am in agreement with her on that point, because I, too, have read the "Entdeckung der Seele" by that author; as I suppose she, too, had. I am inclined to think that in her case (as she was experimenting with a dog) it was only natural for her to think of these psycho-olfactory theories—perhaps without knowing it—even before the experiments. Therefore, the experiments themselves would always be perfectly "genuine," but of course this genuineness is of a different sort to what she ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... at a flash of light, or a threatened blow, a reflex action takes place, in which the afferent nerves are the optic, the efferent, the facial. When a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a reflex action through the same motor nerve, while the olfactory nerves constitute the afferent channels. In these cases, therefore, reflex action must be effected through the brain, all the nerves involved being cerebral. 'When the whole body starts at a loud noise, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... sniffed again, she knew. That was not a nature smell; horrible though it was it was not the tragic smell of corruption. It had something, almost one might say, low down about it, little, mean, business-like—it was her first sniff of returning Civilization, the first impression on an olfactory sense cleared and cleaned ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... himself with some doctor's stuff like cologne?" continued Low, with the disgust of keen olfactory sensibilities. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... or trilobate, with a projecting backward xiphoid process" (Professor Flower). The ulna and radius in the rorquals are also comparatively longer than in the baleen whales. In the skull, the supraorbital processes of the frontals are broader in the rorquals than in others, and the olfactory fossa is ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... deficient in the corpus callosum; at the age of sixty-two, though of feeble intelligence, he presented no signs of nervous disorder. Claude Bernard made an autopsy on a woman who had no trace of olfactory lobes, and after a minute inquiry into her life he found that her sense of smell had ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... television sets on a country highway? It was like—why, it was like selling eggs in the lobby of the Hotel International! Then it occurred to him that his own TV set had not been in good working order for more than a year. The olfactory control had jammed last week while he was watching a Sumatran tribal ceremony, inland from Soerabaja, and he had been unable to smell the backdrop frangipani blossoms. It was time he ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... all this does not bring him the keen pleasure he experiences when he inhales the fragrance of the rose, the perfume of flowers with the dew still upon them, the smell of the freshly turned earth, the newly cut grass, or the blossom laden trees. In the case of Helen Keller, the olfactory nerves have been cultivated to a very high degree, and through this sense she is often able to recognize her friends. A little blind boy once told me that each member of his family had a distinct odor, by which he could tell things worn by them, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... might satisfy them. What more cruel for an unfortunate fellow, with an empty purse, than to pass by the kitchen of a restaurateur, when, pinched by hunger, he has not the means of procuring himself a dinner? His olfactory nerves being still more readily affected when his stomach is empty, far from affording him a pleasing sensation, then serve only to sharpen the torment which he suffers. It is worse than the punishment of Tantalus, who, dying with thirst, could not drink, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon



Words linked to "Olfactory" :   olfactory organ, olfactory brain, olfactory property, olfactory impairment, olfactive, olfactory sensation, olfactory bulb, olfactory perception, olfactory modality, olfactory nerve



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