[52] Marro, La, Puberta, 1898, Chapter II.  Tardif found in boys that perfumes exerted little or no influence on circulation and respiration before puberty, though his observations on this point were too few to carry weight.

IV.

The Influence of Perfumes—­Their Aboriginal Relationship to Sexual Body Odors—­This True even of the Fragrance of Flowers—­The Synthetic Manufacture of Perfumes—­The Sexual Effects of Perfumes—­Perfumes perhaps Originally Used to Heighten the Body Odors—­The Special Significance of the Musk Odor—­Its Wide Natural Diffusion in Plants and Animals and Man—­Musk a Powerful Stimulant—­Its Widespread Use as a Perfume—­Peau d’Espagne—­The Smell of Leather and its Occasional Sexual Effects—­The Sexual Influence of the Odors of Flowers—­The Identity of many Plant Odors with Certain Normal and Abnormal Body Odors—­The Smell of Semen in this Connection.

So far we have been mainly concerned with purely personal odors.  It is, however, no longer possible to confine the discussion of the sexual significance of odor within the purely animal limit.  The various characteristics of personal odor which have been noted—­alike those which tend to make it repulsive and those which tend to make it attractive—­have led to the use of artificial perfumes, to heighten the natural odor when it is regarded as attractive, to disguise it when it is regarded as repellent; while at the same time, happily covering both of these impulses, has developed the pure delight in perfume for its own agreeableness, the aesthetic side of olfaction.  In this way—­although in a much less constant and less elaborate manner—­the body became adorned to the sense of smell just as by clothing and ornament it is adorned to the sense of sight.

But—­and this is a point of great significance from our present standpoint—­we do not really leave the sexual sphere by introducing artificial perfumes.  The perfumes which we extract from natural products, or, as is now frequently the case, produce by chemical synthesis, are themselves either actually animal sexual odors or allied in character or composition, to the personal odors they are used to heighten or disguise.  Musk is the product of glands of the male Moschus moschiferus which correspond to preputial sebaceous glands; castoreum is the product of similar sexual glands in the beaver, and civet likewise from the civet; ambergris is an intestinal calculus found in the rectum of the cachelot.[53] Not only, however, are nearly all the perfumes of animal origin, in use by civilized man, odors which have a specially sexual object among the animals from which they are derived, but even the perfumes of flowers may be said to be of sexual character.  They are given out at the reproductive period in the lives of plants, and they clearly have very largely as their object an appeal to the insects who secure plant fertilization,