Night Flowers 227 



would be undistinguishable in the dark, and there- 

 fore useless. 



Whoever tries to gather red currants or straw- 

 berries by twilight will find that the red of the 

 fruit, so noticeable by day, now blends undis- 

 tinguishably with the green of the leaves. Long 

 before real darkness comes, the most conspicuous 

 of daytime colors vanishes into the shadows. But 

 a very small object, if it be white, can be seen in 

 the darkest hours of a moonless night. This the 

 night-flowers seem to have learned, for they are 

 all white or pale-yellow. 



Their distinguishing charm is their sweetness. 

 Honeysuckle, tuberose, day-lily, stephanotis, night- 

 blooming cereus what scents for a Sybarite are 

 here! The evening primroses have a delicious 

 fragrance, and the diurnal primroses have none. 

 There are two nocturnal species of silene, both 

 sweet-scented, while the nine or ten diurnal spe- 

 cies are all odorless. Even the despised jimson- 

 weed blossom lures the moths by a delicate per- 

 fume which is lost directly we gather it, in the 

 rank odor of the broken stem. 



The closing time of these night-flowers, like the 

 time of their expansion, is variable. It may de- 

 pend partly upon the vigor of the plant, its age, 



