242 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



More than that, I am, in that visionary moment, 

 clinging fast to the slim vertical branches, high 

 above the earth, forty or fifty feet perhaps ; and 

 just where I have ceased from climbing, in the 

 cleft of a branch and against the white bark, I see 

 the dainty little cup-shaped nest I have been seek- 

 ing ; and round my head, as I gaze down in it, 

 delighted at the sight of the small pearly eggs it 

 contains, flutter the black-headed, golden-winged 

 siskins, uttering their long canary-like notes of 

 solicitude. It all comes and goes like a flash of 

 lightning, but the scene revealed, and the accom- 

 panying feeling, the complete recovery of a lost 

 sensation, are wonderfully real. Nothing that we 

 see or hear can thus restore the past. The sight of 

 the poplar tree, the sound made by the wind in its 

 summer foliage, the song of the golden-winged 

 siskins when I meet with them in captivity, bring 

 up many past scenes to my mind, and among others 

 the picture I have described ; but it is a picture 

 only, until the fragrance of the poplar touches the 

 nerve of smell, and then it is something more. 



I have no doubt that my experience is similar to 

 that of others, especially of those who have lived a 

 rural life, and whose senses have been trained by 

 an early-acquired habit of attention. When we 

 read of Cuvier (and the same thing has been re- 

 corded of others), that the scent of some humble 

 flower or weed, familiar to him in boyhood, would 

 always affect him to tears, I presume that the 

 poignant feeling of grief grief, that is, for the 



