The Perfume of an Evening Primrose. 239 



perfume, but on those plains, where the grass was 

 cropped close, the plant was small, only a few 

 inches high, and the flowers no bigger than butter- 

 cups. Afterwards I met with it again in the 

 swampy woods and everglades along the Plata 

 River ; and there it grew tall and rank, five or six 

 feet high in some cases, with large flowers that had 

 only a faint perfume. Still later, going on longer 

 expeditions, sometimes with cattle, I found it in 

 extraordinary abundance on the level pampas south 

 of the Salado River ; there it was a tall slender 

 plant, grass-like among the tall grasses, with wide 

 open flowers about an inch in diameter, and not 

 more than two or three on each plant. Finally, I 

 remember that on first landing in Patagonia, on a 

 desert part of the coast, the time being a little after 

 daybreak, I became conscious of the familiar per- 

 fume in the air, and, looking about me, discovered 

 a plant growing on the barren sand not many yards 

 from the sea ; there it grew, low and bush-like in 

 form, with stiff horizontal stems and a profusion of 

 small symmetrical flowers. 



All this about the plant, and much more, with 

 many scenes and events of the past, are suggested 

 to my mind by the flower in my hand ; but while 

 these scenes and events are recalled with pleasure, 

 it is a kind of mental pleasure that we frequently 

 experience, and very slight in degree. But when I 

 approach the flower to my face and inhale its per- 

 fume, then a shock of keen pleasure is experienced, 

 and a mental change so great that it is like a 



