Abstract
“SEE, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.” Thus poetically spoke the Patriarch Isaac. The man of modern science tells us, prosaically, that the odour of moist earth is due to a bacterium, named Cladothrix odorifera. I write to ask if any one has yet accounted for the well-known and peculiar odour, yielded by clay and clayey rocks when breathed upon. This odour can scarcely be due to bacteria, for it is manifested by cabinet specimens more than twenty years old. Pure alumina appears to be odourless.
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WHITMELL, C. The Smell of Earth. Nature 59, 55 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/059055c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/059055c0
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