o full participation in
the human economy. The first examination, as we shall shortly see, gets
rid at once of substances which would be actively and immediately
destructive to the very tissues of the mouth and body; the second
discriminates between poisonous and chemically harmless food-stuffs; and
the third merely decides the minor question whether the particular food
is likely to prove then and there wholesome or indigestible to the
particular person. The sense of taste proceeds, in fact, upon the
principle of gradual selection and elimination; it refuses first what is
positively destructive, next what is more remotely deleterious, and
finally what is only undesirable or over-luscious.

When we want to assure ourselves, by means of taste, about any unknown
object--say a lump of some white stuff, which may be crystal, or glass,
or alum, or borax, or quartz, or rock-salt--we put the tip of the tongue
against it gingerly. If it begins to burn us, we draw it away more or
less rapidly with an accompaniment in language strictly dependent upon
our personal habits and manners. The test we thus occasionally apply,
even in the civilised adult state, to unknown bodies is one that is
being applied every day and all day long by children and savages.
Unsophisticated humanity is constantly putting everything it sees up to
its mouth in a frank spirit of experimental inquiry as to its gustatory
properties. In civilised life we find everything ready labelled and
assorted for us; we comparatively seldom require to roll the contents of
a suspicious bottle (in very small quantities) doubtfully upon the
tongue in order to discover whether it is pale sherry or Chili vinegar,
Dublin stout or mushroom ketchup. But in the savage state, from which,
geologically and biologically speaking, we have only just emerged,
bottles and labels do not exist. Primitive man, therefore, in his sweet
simplicity, has only two modes open before him for deciding whether the
things he finds are or are not strictly edible. The first thing he does
is to sniff at them; and smell, being, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has well
put it, an anticipatory taste, generally gives him some idea of what the
thing is likely to prove. The second thing he does is to pop it into his
mouth, and proceed practically to examine its further characteristics.

Strictly speaking, with the tip of the tongue one can't really taste at
all. If you put a small drop of honey or of oil of bitter almond