HONEYSUCKLE 71 



and sometimes when I am out at night walking in 

 a deep lane with untrimmed hedges on either side, 

 I all at once come into an air so laden with the rich 

 perfume as to cause it to seem thick or dense, then 

 after two or three steps further have passed again 

 into a perfectly scentless air. If I then turn back to 

 get once more into the fragrant area I cannot find it. 

 Frequently I have walked up and down a dark narrow 

 lane for half an hour in search of the lost scent, and 

 have also hunted for the plant in the hedge from 

 which it emanated, and have failed to find either 

 scent or plant. 



This was a puzzle to me on many a summer night 

 in the south and west of England, where honeysuckle 

 and other fragrant plants are most luxuriant, and I 

 can only suppose that in the still, warm night air 

 the massed flowers pour out their fragrant particles 

 into the deep lane below, and that the fragrance does 

 not disperse, but remains suspended in the air as if 

 enclosed in a film until the wind created by some 

 heavy moving body — a stray donkey, or belated 

 labourer plodding home, or a night-prowling field 

 naturalist — sends the whole mass floating like a 

 cloud or bubble away. 



The most delightful experience of this kind is 

 when the cloud of fragrance encountered is from no 

 flower, but from the leaf of the sweet-briar. In some 

 districts in southern England it flourishes so greatly 

 in the hedges that one can count on finding there 

 clouds of fragrance in the lanes on any still, warm 

 summer night. It is a fragrance pleasing to every 



