Smells, as Liam Farrell points out in his column (p 553), have the power to blank out other sensations in our lives completely. This seems to be true even while just reading about them. And that's not only bad smells. A survey of people's favourite smells on the internet (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/as07/yourniffs.htm) provides comprehensive lists, grouped under atmospheric, body parts, chemicals, commercial perfumes and scents, essential oils, flowers, food and drink, fruit, materials, medicines, miscellaneous, household objects, pets, and trees. And while cat's urine is not among those, rain soaked dog seems to do for some people what freshly lit matches, chlorine bleach, or photocopier smells do for others. Reassuringly, fresh cut grass, freshly washed hair, and roses are also included in the list.
It's a shame the internet does not offer scratch and sniff technology (although the scratch and sniff page at www.bright.net/∼mamba/scratch.html may offer some surprises on that front), as some of the items listed seem on the slightly bizarre side.
A more scientific approach to the phenomenon of smells can be found at www.hhmi.org/senses/ (Seeing, hearing, and smelling the world, a report from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute). This describes the discovery of the odorant receptor proteins by two American scientists in 1991, explains how we remember or recognise odours, and how we sniff out sexual and social signals. For those who are particularly interested in the mysteries of odour in human sexuality, www.pheromones.com offers “an engrossing read on a whole new world under our noses.”
The web based smells database of the chemistry department at Berkeley university in California, United States (http://mc2.cchem.berkeley.edu/Smells/index.html), lists what it calls “interesting smells.” These include chemicals with disagreeable and agreeable sounding smells (hydrogen sulfide—smells of rotten eggs; beta-phenyl ethyl alcohol—smells like roses), complete with graphic representations and chemical attributes.