•^ The Scented Qarden $£ 



savour and vertue.' And to violets the old herbalists 

 ascribed the gift of sleep. ' For them that may not sleep 

 for sickness, seethe the violets in water and at even let 

 him soke well hys f eete in the water to the ancles ; when 

 he goeth to bed bind of this herb to his temples and he 

 shall slepe well by the grace of God.' We are all familiar 

 with the curious effect produced by smelling violets. 

 The keen delicious perfume in a few seconds becomes 

 fainter and similar to that of a mossy bank and in another 

 moment the scent has apparently vanished. But the 

 violets are of course still full of fragrance and it is our 

 sense of smell which is exhausted, not the perfume of 

 the violets. The dominant note in their scent is ionone, 

 which has a tiring, almost soporific effect on the sense of 

 smell. Shakespeare refers to the fleeting nature of the 

 pleasure given by this exquisite scent : 



* Sweet, not lasting 

 The perfume and suppliance of a minute.' 



Garden varieties of the sweet-scented violet have a 

 richer scent, but they have not the exquisitely keen, pure, 

 almost rarefied scent of wild violets. As a child one 

 thought that the white violet was even more sweetly 

 scented than the purple, and the first time one read the 

 immortal essay ' Of Gardens ' it came as a pleasant sur- 

 prise to find one's childish belief confirmed by no less a 

 personage than the great Francis Bacon. ' That which 

 above all yields the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, 

 especially the white double violet which comes twice a 

 year, about the middle of April and about Bartholomew- 

 tide.' 



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