WHAT IS A KISS?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3372, 11 November 1911, Page 3

WHAT IS A KISS?

A “SNIFFING SALUTE.” Kissing is an extremely ancient habit of mankind, corning to use from tar beyond the range of history, and undoubtedly practised bv the remote am-mal-like ancestors of the human race. Poets have exalted it, and m these hygienic days doctors have condemned it In the United States they have even .proposed to forbid it by law, on the ground that disease germs may be (and undeniably are in, some cases) icomveyed by it from one individual to another. ' But it is too deepyrooted in human nature, and has a significance and origin too closely associated with human well-being in the past, and even in the present, to' permit of its being altogether “tabooed” by medical authority. . , . . ~ There are two kinds of kissing practised by mankind at the present time —one takes the form of “noserubbing’ ’ —each kiss-giver rubbing hi* nose against that or the other. The second kind, which is that familiar to us in Europe, consists in pressing the lips against the lips, skin, or hair of another individual, and making a shoit quick inspiration, resulting in a more or less audible sound. Both kinds are really of the nature of “sniffing,” the active effort to smell or explore by the olfactory sense. The “nose-kiss” exists in races so far apart from one another as the Maoris of New Zealand and the Esquimaux lof the Arctic regions. It is the habit of the Chinese, of the Malays, and other Asiatic races. The only Europeans who practise it are the Laplanders. The lip-kiss is distinguishable by some authorities as “the salute by, taste” from nose-rubbing, which is- “the salute by smell.” The. word “kiss” is connected by iSkeat. with the Latin “gustus” taste: . 'both words signify essentially “choice.” But it would be a mistake to regard the lip-kiss as merely jan effort to taste in the strict sense, since the act of inspiration accompanying it brings the olfactory passages of the nose into play. Lip-kissing is frequently mentioned in the most ancient Hebrew books of the Bible, and it was also the method of affectionate salutation among the Ancient Greeks. Primarily both ;kinds of kissing were, there could be no doubt, ,an act of exploration, discrimination, and recognition dependent on the sense of smell. The more primitive character of the kiss is retained by the lovers’ kiss, the mother’s kissing and sniffing at Irer babe, and by the kiss of salutation to a friend returning from or setting out on a distant journey. Identification and memorising by the sense of smell is the remote origin and explanation of those kisses. The kissing of one another by .grown-up men as a salutation was abandoned in this country as late as the eighteenth century.—Sir Ray Lankester, in the “Daily Telegraph.”