Joan Silver-pin 317 



The question of the agreeableness of a flower 

 scent is a matter of public opinion as well as personal 

 choice. Environment and education influence us. 

 In olden times every one liked certain scents deemed 

 odious to-day. Parkinson's praise of Sweet Sultans 

 was, " They are of so exceeding sweet a scent as it 

 surpasses the best civet that is." Have you ever 

 smelt civet ? You will need no words to tell you 

 that the civet is a little cousin of the skunk. Cow- 

 per could not talk with civet in the room ; most of 

 us could not even breathe. The old herbalists call 

 Privet sweet-scented. I don't know that it is strange 

 to find a generation who loved civet and musk think- 

 ing Privet pleasant-scented. Nearly all our modern 

 botanists have copied the words of their predecessors; 

 but I scarcely know what to say or to think when I 

 find so exact an observer as John Burroughs calling 

 Privet "faintly sweet-scented." I find it rankly ill- 

 scented. 



The men of Elizabethan days were much more 

 learned in perfumes and fonder of them than are 

 most folk to-day. Authors and poets dwelt frankly 

 upon them without seeming at all vulgar. Of 

 course herbalists, from their choice of subject, were 

 free to write of them at length, and they did so with 

 evident delight. Nowadays the French realists are 

 the only writers who boldly reckon with the sense 

 of smell. It isn't deemed exactly respectable to 

 dwell too much on smells, even pleasant ones ; so 

 this chapter certainly must be brief. 



1 suppose nine-tenths of all who love flower 

 scents would give Violets as their favorite fragrance; 



