THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 



cool and fitful weather of their flowering time. In 

 fact, scent is to sight what poetry is to painting; less 

 definite but far wider in its power, moving us more 

 by association than by a direct appeal, enriching the 

 present not merely with visions but with sounds and 

 emotions of the past, and seeming to involve all the 

 other senses and the mind as well in one complex de- 

 light. 



It may be that our sense of smell is growing less 

 acute. Certainly we seem to lay less store by scented 

 flowers than our ancestors used to do, to judge by 

 their writings. Bacon is not often a poetical writer, 

 but when he speaks of the scent of flowers he writes, 

 though in prose, like Shakespeare himself. The breath 

 of flowers, he says, is far sweeter in the air (where it 

 comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in 

 the hand. There are many people now who never 

 notice that a flower is scented at all unless it is thrust 

 under their noses. Then the list which he gives of 

 flowers that are fast of their smells and of those which 

 yield them to the air proves that he was curious in 

 this matter. He notes, for instance, that Strawberry 

 leaves dying yield a most excellent cordial smell; and 

 that Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water-Mint perfume 

 the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, 

 but being trodden upon and crushed. "Therefore 

 you are to set whole allies of them, to have the pleasure, 

 when you walk or tread." Parkinson, too, is often 

 very elaborate and exact in his description of scents, 

 whether sweet or foul; and far more plants were 



