26 PROSERPINA. 



strained in them, during their life, to their juices or dust, 

 and not allowed sensibly to pollute the air, I should like 

 the scholar to re-read pp. 251, 252 of vol. i., and then to 

 consider with himself what a grotesquely warped and 

 gnarled thing the modern scientific mind is, which fierce- 

 ly busies itself in venomous chemistries that blast every 

 leaf from the forests ten miles round ; and yet cannot 

 tell us, nor even think of telling us, nor does even one 

 of its pupils think of asking it all the while, how a violet 

 throws off her perfume ! far less, whether it might not 

 be more wholesome to ' treat ' the air which men are to 

 breathe in masses, by administration of vale-lilies and 

 violets, instead of charcoal and sulphur ! 



The closing sentence of the first volume just now re- 

 ferred to p. 254 should also be re-read ; it was the 

 sum of a chapter I had in hand at that time on the Sub- 

 stances and Essences of Plants which never got fin- 

 ished; and in trying to put it into small space, it 

 has become obscure : the terms " logically inexplicable" 

 meaning that no words or process of comparison will de- 

 fine scents, nor do any traceable modes of sequence or 

 relation connect them ; each is an independent power, 

 and gives a separate impression to the senses. Above 

 all, there is no logic of pleasure, nor any assignable 

 reason for the difference, between loathsome and de- 

 lightful scent, which makes the fungus foul and the 

 vervain sacred : but one practical conclusion I (who am 

 in all final ways the most prosaic and practical of human 



