230 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



heveled, her mournful eyes fixed ever on the earth 

 where she will shortly be. 



I never pass this weedy, pale-flowered alien 

 without stooping to thrust my nose into first one 

 blossom then another, and still another, until that 

 organ, like some industrious bee, is thickly pow- 

 dered with the golden dust. If, after an interval, 

 I find myself once more at the same spot, I repeat 

 this performance with as much care as if it was 

 a kind of religious ceremony it would not be safe 

 to omit ; and at all times I am as reluctant to pass 

 without approaching my nose to it, as the great 

 Dr. Johnson was to pass a street-post without 

 touching it with his hand. My motive, however, 

 is not a superstitious one, nor is it merely one of 

 those meaningless habits which men sometimes 

 contract, and of which they are scarcely conscious. 

 When I first knew the evening primrose, where it 

 is both a wild and a garden flower and very com- 

 mon, I did not often smell at it, but was satisfied 

 to inhale its subtle fragrance from the air. And 

 this reminds me that in England it does not per- 

 fume the air as it certainly does on the pampas of 

 La Plata, in the early morning in places where it 

 is abundant; here its fragrance, while unchanged 

 in character, has either become less volatile or so 

 diminished in quantity that one is not sensible 

 that the flower possesses a perfume until he ap- 

 proaches his nose to it. 



My sole motive in smelling the evening prim- 

 rose is the pleasure it gives me. This pleasure 



