A certain Dr. Dan McKenzie has written a philosophy of smells, for such the title of his book "'Aromatics and the Soul suggests." To gather together impressions of the smells of different cities is certainly an original idea. Some of his comparisons, however, are quite interesting. London's brand of smell, he informs us has changed of late:
"Twenty years ago it was faintly acid, with a mixture of horses and harness; to-day -it is a mixture of tar and burned lubricating oil, by no means so pleasant." Paris is "one. half wood smoke, one-quarter roasting coffee, and one-quarter drains.'? Rome is "a city of candles and incense, mingled with the dry—_mustinoss of crumbling skeletons." In Edinburgh you encounter "the smell of old Scotland," and in Glasgow "damp soot strangles with the smell of the Broomiclaw for the mastery."" As for Dublin, it mingles "the warm rich aroma of Guinness's Brewery with the cold smell of a corpse from the Liffey." The list may be supplemented from other sources, The smell of Arabia has been described by Mr, Kipling as "camel? and by Sir Ernest Shackleton as "rancid butter." It was Sir Ernest who described the odour of China as that of ''moth-eaten centuries—probably due to the length: of time the country has lived and the lack of disinfections."
"Motheaten Centuries" sounds poetic but hardly covers the whole gamut of smells in China. In Sir Ernest's view the deal smell was; that of Mauritius, though Japan. too, had."'the genuine spicy smell." Most of us living out East would probably prefer to live in a city where smell was an exception rather than the rule.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.