236 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



of the past as I have described, and to the purely 

 delightful recovery of a vanished sensation. Not 

 only flowery and aromatic odors can produce this 

 powerful effect; it is caused by any smell, not 

 positively disagreeable, which may be in any way 

 associated with a happy period in early or past 

 life: the smell, for instance, of peat smoke, of a 

 brewery, a tan yard, of cattle and sheep, and 

 sheep-folds, of burning weeds, brushwood, and 

 charcoal ; the dank smell of marshes, and the smell, 

 ''ancient and fish-like," that clings about many 

 seaside towns and villages; also the smell of the 

 sea itself, and of decaying seaweed, and the dusty 

 smell of rain in summer, and the smell of new 

 mown hay, and of stables and of freshly-ploughed 

 ground, with so many others tfeat every reader 

 can add to the list from his own experience. Be- 

 ing so common a thing, it may be thought that I 

 have dwelt too long on it. My excuse must be 

 that some things are common without being 

 familiar ; also that some common things have not 

 yet been explained. 



Locke somewhere says that unless we refresh 

 ouiVdfiental pictures of what we have seen by look- 

 ing again at their originals, they fade, and in the 

 end are lost. Bain appears to have the same opin- 

 ion, at all events he says : ' ' The simplest impres- 

 sion that can be made, of taste, smell, touch, hear- 

 ing, sight, needs repetition in order to endure 

 of its own accord." Probably it is a fact that 

 when any scene, not yet lost by the memory, a 



