Word: deere
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...current issue of Natural History, Jennie E. Harris describes the male musk deer as only 20 inches tall at the shoulders. He has no antlers. He feeds simply on spicy roots and fungi; if it were not for his redolent pouch, he would probably live a quiet, secluded life...
Ancient Lure. The musk deer's scent gland, according to Charles Darwin, is the product of an evolutionary runaround. Millions of years ago, the male, deer that smelled the nicest attracted the most females-and thus left the most descendants. A weakly scented male got nowhere as a progenitor...
...this classic process of sexual selection, the male deer's glands grew bigger and muskier. The musk deer's luring game turned into a deadly risk for him when human beings caught on to the musk smell. As the deer's fame grew, rajahs and ranees, kings and their concubines, seducers and seductresses learned to use musk as a perfume. The Prophet Mohamed wrote in the Koran: "The Seal of Musk. For this let those pant who pant for bliss." The Empress Josephine, to rouse Napoleon's baser nature, used so much musk that the walls...
Biologists believe that scent, in the long, long ago, was the principal attraction between the sexes. Other bonds developed later, and scent dropped into the background.* But deep in the human structure is a residual sensitivity to the same animal perfume that interests the female musk deer. Both men & women once used musk scent straight, but modern perfumers are more subtle: it is now diluted and smothered with flowery fragrances. But its Sunday punch is still there. Musk, or some musklike scent, is the base for most pulse-twitching perfumes, which (as the advertisements hint) "drive men wild...
...nature intended the magic scent as something to drive females wild. If modern men could be convinced of this principle (as they were when Mohamed wrote of panting and of bliss) a great new market would boom the perfume industry. Chemists, to save the little male musk deer, would have to work harder and faster...