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106
PRELUDE TO CHAP. IX.
compared with that of birds and beasts of prey, it may be granted that, within a certain range of impressions, it is relatively duller and coarser than with them. It is, however, assumed, that sight and smell, when perfect, have the faculty of perceiving colours, and odours purely, unassociated, that is, with any impression grateful or otherwise; and thus, as man's smell was held to be imperfect, he was supposed to be sensible of odours as creatures with hard, that is, compound eyes are of colours. For such creatures[1] (crustacea, insects and others), having their eyes uncovered, being without lids that is, see objects which are at a distance "indistinctly, and as if they were looking through congenitally attached eye-lids."
- ↑ Hist. An. I. 15. 16.
