PLANT-ODOURS 67 



Of natural odours, the most agreeable are the 

 aromatic and fragrant that emanate from plants. 

 The odours of spices and fruits, all more or less 

 associated in the mind with tastes, are of a distinctly 

 lower or less intellectual or aesthetic order. It is 

 related of Wordsworth that he was without the sense 

 of smell, and that on one occasion when he was sitting 

 on a spring day in his flowery garden the unknown 

 sense suddenly came to him to astonish and delight 

 with the lovely novel sensation. He described it as 

 being like a vision of Paradise. A similar vision has 

 been mine at frequent intervals all my life; I doubt 

 if its loveliness has been less in my case than in that 

 of the poet, to whom it came once as by a miracle. 

 When a gust of flowery fragrance comes to me, as 

 when I walk by a blossoming beanfield or a field of 

 lucerne, it is always like a new and wonderful ex- 

 perience, a delightful surprise. The reason of this 

 effect, I take it, is that odours do not register impres- 

 sions in our brains which may be reproduced at will, 

 as it is with sights and sounds. Thus odours never 

 wholly lose the effect of novelty. We remember that 

 certain flowers delighted us with their fragrance, 

 but cannot recall or recover the sensation; there is 

 no record, no image. Nevertheless, the bare remem- 

 brance of it — of what it was to us at the moment — 

 is a joy for ever. I think of certain flowering trees 

 — catalpa, orange, lime, mimosa, acacia, locust, with 

 many others — and cherish a love of them which is 

 almost like the love that some woman has inspired 

 in us with her charm, the quality which has lifted her 



