PERFUMES 



I 



AFTER speaking at some length of the intelligence of 

 the flowers, it will seem natural that we should say 

 a word of their soul, which is their perfume. Un- 

 fortunately, here, as in the case of the soul of man, a perfume 

 of another sphere, where reason bathes, we have at once to do 

 with the unknowable. We are almost entirely unacquainted 

 with the purpose of that zone of festive and invisibly magnif- 

 icent air which the corollas shed around themselves. There 

 is, in fact, a great doubt whether it serves chiefly to attract 

 the insects. In the first place, many among the most sweet- 

 scented of the flowers do not admit of cross-fertilization, so 

 that the visit of the butterfly or the bee is to them a matter 

 of indifference or annoyance. Next, that which attracts the 

 insects is solely the pollen and the nectar, which, generally, 

 have no perceptible odour. And thus we see them neglect the 

 most delicously perfumed flowers, such as the rose and the 

 carnation, to besiege in crowds the flowers of the maple or the 

 hazel-tree, whose aroma is, in a manner of speaking, null. 



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