22 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
CHAPTER II. 
THE ODOUR OF ROSE. 
Tue organs of the sense of smell can be trained to the appreciation of 
perfumes, especially by young persons, as easily as the palate can 
be trained for business purposes to the tasting of the flavours of 
wines, tea, or coffee. Of course a taster, sampler, or evaluer of 
such beverages must naturally be possessed of a finely developed 
nervous susceptibility to the shght variations occurring in every 
sample which comes under his notice. Such natural perfection 
of susceptibility is not common, although many possess the gift 
without being quite aware of it: they may not be in the tea-trade 
or the wine-trade, or in any trade at all; and so the gift is not 
trained, or even appreciated. To those who are not constantly 
occupied in the culture of the rose, it may seem that one rose is 
very much the same as another, and excepting a few variations in 
colour and habit of growth there is very little difference distin- 
guishable. Probably many persons would never believe that there 
are not only roses perfectly devoid of odour, but there are some 
which stink. There are experienced gardeners who can name 
many varieties of rose in the dark: this means that the perfume 
of roses is very varied, and that no two varieties possess the same 
odour. What is called the pure odour of rose is unique, undefin- 
able, incomparable. It is in fact a type, and no imitation can 
approach it. It may be best represented by the Rosa centifola 
cultivated in Provence, or by the R. Damascena cultivated in 
Bulgaria. The odour of tea is not perceptible in the so-called 
**'Tea-roses,” indeed many “ Tea-roses”’ are odourless, such as 
the Mélanie Souppert, Marie Guillot, Marie Caroline de Sertoux, 
Triomphe de Milan, &e. Some “ 'Tea-roses ” possess very delicate 
fruity odours, somewhat approaching that of raspberry, such as 
the Maréchal Niel and the Madame Bravy. The odours of some 
