Peddler Recovers His Cash

1916

Identifies His Lost Roll by Odor of Onions.

NEW YORK — The much-maligned onion is a good friend to Simon Silverman of Brooklyn, who drives a fruit and vegetable wagon.

Simon missed $32 just after he had delivered his last load to a customer at Reid avenue and Kosciusko street. He told Patrolman Gleason that he thought George Boland had picked up the bills. Boland, who was standing near by, was searched and a roll of bills found on him.

"Are these yours?" asked the policeman.

"My money always smell of onions," replied Silverman.

Gleason took a whiff of the roll and when he had recovered said:

"They're yours, all right."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

Gas Masks Are Urged for Mail Train Men

1920

Skunk Pelts in Parcel Post Cause of Woeful Wail

LOCKHART, Texas, Feb. 26. — Bring out the gas masks, for they are sorely needed.

Mail clerks running on trains in the lower part of the State are said to have asked Superintendent Gaines of Ft. Worth to give them protection.

They declare they have been so badly "gassed" by the fumes of skunk hides that they are now incapacitated for further duties unless the proper protection is given them. They have suggested to the district superintendent that U. S. Army gas masks be secured for them to wear during the distribution of the mails.

Skunk hides, say the mail clerks, do not lose their flavor in packing for shipment. Hence, the closed mail cars, as they went their way to the markets of the North, fairly reek with the odor of polecats.

One of the clerks making this station declares the sickening odor of polecat hides, bunches of them, he had to handle on a recent trip, made him so weak that he was compelled to quit the run before he had half completed it.

The Whiskers of Cats

1878

Use of Whiskers to a Cat.

The sense which of all others is most deficient in the cat is that of smell. In this she differs most markedly from the dog. It is said that a piece of meat may be placed in close proximity to a cat, but that, if it is kept covered up she will fail to distinguish it.

This want is, however, partly compensated for by an extremely delicate sense of touch, which is possessed, to a remarkable extent, by the whiskers, or vibrissae, as well as by the general surface of the skin. These bristles are possessed to a greater or less extent by all cats, and are simply greatly developed hairs, having enormously swollen roots, covered with a layer of muscular fibres, with which delicate nerves are connected. By means of these latter, the slightest touch on the extremity of the whiskers, is instantly transmitted to the brain.

Those organs are of the greatest possible value to the cat in its nocturnal campaigns. When it is deprived of the guidance afforded by light it makes its way by the sense of touch, the fine whiskers touching against every object the cat passes, and thus acting in precisely the same manner as a blind man's stick, though with infinitely greater sensibility. Imagine a blind man with not one stick, but with a couple of dozen, of exquisite fineness, and these not held in his hand but embedded in his skin, so that his nerves come into direct contact with them instead of having a layer of skin between, and some notion may be formed of the way in which a cat uses its whiskers.

Your Nose Is Safest Guard Against Poison

1920

Impure Foods Can Be Detected by Sense of Smell

It may not be an elegant thing to do, but if people would smell their food before eating it there would be fewer cases of poisoning, scientists declare. One's nose can generally be depended upon to protect him from injurious foods, if only he would follow the dictates of his sense of smell.

In making an investigation in connection with a case of ptomaine poisoning recently, the experts stated that "in every case known the canned food that contained the dangerous bacilli had an abnormal and usually offensive odor." The ripe olives that have caused such disasters lately do not have an agreeable scent. Where meat causes the trouble, a tainted odor is easily perceptible. So it seems that all one need to is to follow his nose, or at least be guided by what it suggests to him.

"Nature knew what she was going when she gave us the sense of smell. It is more inherent than the sense of taste or of vision. It was the only way we had of telling what was good to eat, in the beginning, for neither the eyes nor the sense of taste is so precise in the matter of protecting us from harm. The so-called lower animals still depend upon the sense of small to protect them from noxious vegetation, and we have not gotten so far away from the animal that we can ignore Nature's greatest of all safeguards."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 7.