PERFUME OF AN EVENING PRIMROSE 231 



greatly surpasses that which I receive from other 

 flowers far more famous for their fragrance, for 

 it is in a great degree mental, and is due to asso- 

 ciation. Why is this pleasure so vivid, so im- 

 measurably greater than the mental pleasure af- 

 forded by the sight of the flower? The books tell 

 us that sight, the most important of our senses, 

 is the most intellectual; while smell, the least im- 

 portant, is in man the most emotional sense. This 

 is a very brief statement of the fact; I will now 

 restate it another way and more fully. 



I am now holding an evening primrose in my 

 hand. As a fact at this moment I am holding 

 nothing but the pen with which I am writing this 

 chapter; but I am supposing myself back in the 

 garden, and holding the flower that first suggested 

 this train of thought. I turn it about this way and 

 that, and although it pleases it does not delight, 

 does not move me: certainly I do not think very 

 highly of its beauty, although it is beautiful; 

 placed beside the rose, the fuchsia, the azalea, or 

 the lily, it would not attract the eye. But it is a 

 link with the past, it summons vanished scenes to 

 my mind. I recognize that the plant I plucked it 

 from possesses a good deal of adaptiveness, a 

 quality one would scarcely suspect from seeing it 

 only in an English garden. Thus I remember that 

 I first knew it as a garden flower, that it grew 

 large, on a large plant, as here; that on summer 

 evenings I was accustomed to watch its slim, pale, 

 yellow buds unfold, and called it, when speaking in 



