than on those that are agreeable.  It is therefore of interest to note that in a few remarkable novels of recent times the attractiveness of personal odor has been emphasized.  This is notably so in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which Count Peter suddenly resolves to marry Princess Helena after inhaling her odor at a ball.  In d’Annunzio’s Trionfo della Morte the seductive and consoling odor of the beloved woman’s skin is described in several passages; thus, when Giorgio kissed Ippolita’s arms and shoulders, we are told, “he perceived the sharp and yet delicate perfume of her, the perfume of the skin that in the hour of joy became intoxicating as that of the tuberose, and a terrible lash to desire.”

When we are dealing with the sexual significance of personal odors in man there is at the outset an important difference to be noticed in comparison with the lower mammals.  Not only is the significance of odor altogether very much less, but the focus of olfactory attractiveness has been displaced.  The centre of olfactory attractiveness is not, as usually among animals, in the sexual region, but is transferred to the upper part of the body.  In this respect the sexual olfactory allurement in man resembles what we find in the sphere of vision, for neither the sexual organs of man nor of woman are usually beautiful in the eyes of the opposite sex, and their exhibition is not among us regarded as a necessary stage in courtship.  The odor of the body, like its beauty, in so far as it can be regarded as a possible sexual allurement, has in the course of development been transferred to the upper parts.  The careful concealment of the sexual region has doubtless favored this transfer.  It has thus happened that when personal odor acts as a sexual allurement it is the armpit, in any case normally the chief focus of odor in the body, which mainly comes into play, together with the skin and the hair.

Aubert, of Lyons, noted that during menstruation the odor of the armpits may become more powerful, and describes it as being at this time an aromatic odor of acidulous or chloroform character.  Galopin remarks that, while some women’s armpits smell of sheep in rut, others, when exposed to the air, have a fragrance of ambergris or violet.  Dark persons (according to Gould and Pyle) are said sometimes to exhale a prussic acid odor, and blondes more frequently musk; Galopin associates the ambergris odor more especially with blondes.

While some European poets have faintly indicated the woman’s armpit as a centre of sexual attraction, it is among Eastern poets that we may find the idea more directly and naturally expressed.  Thus, in a Chinese drama ("The Transmigration of Yo-Chow,” Mercure de France, No. 8, 1901) we find a learned young doctor addressing the following poem to his betrothed:—­

        “When I have climbed to the bushy summit of Mount Chao,
        I have still not reached to the level of your odorous armpit. 
        I must needs mount to the sky
        Before the breeze brings to me
        The perfume of that embalsamed nest!”