As flavours may be divided into (a) sweet, (b) bitter, so with
smells. In some things the flavour and the smell have the same
quality, i.e. both are sweet or both bitter, in others they diverge.
Similarly a smell, like a flavour, may be pungent, astringent, acid,
or succulent. But, as we said, because smells are much less easy to
discriminate than flavours, the names of these varieties are applied
to smells only metaphorically; for example 'sweet' is extended from
the taste to the smell of saffron or honey, 'pungent' to that of
thyme, and so on.
In the same sense in which hearing has for its object both the
audible and the inaudible, sight both the visible and the invisible,
smell has for its object both the odorous and the inodorous.
'Inodorous' may be either (a) what has no smell at all, or (b) what
has a small or feeble smell. The same ambiguity lurks in the word
'tasteless'.
Smelling, like the operation of the senses previously examined,
takes place through a medium, i.e. through air or water-I add water,
because water-animals too (both sanguineous and non-sanguineous)
seem to smell just as much as land-animals; at any rate some of them
make directly for their food from a distance if it has any scent. That
is why the following facts constitute a problem for us. All animals
smell in the same way, but man smells only when he inhales; if he
exhales or holds his breath, he ceases to smell, no difference being
made whether the odorous object is distant or near, or even placed
inside the nose and actually on the wall of the nostril; it is a
disability common to all the senses not to perceive what is in
immediate contact with the organ of sense, but our failure to
apprehend what is odorous without the help of inhalation is peculiar
(the fact is obvious on making the experiment).
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