GORSE 69 



suggests castor-oil and the fish-and-cucumber odour 

 of smelts — a strange and fascinating combination. 



The fragrance of gorse is not of the highest order, 

 yet it holds and enchants me above most flowers, 

 and being itself a sun's child, like the sunflower, or 

 sun-gazer as we caU it in Spanish, its habit is the 

 exact opposite of that of the " melancholy flowers," 

 which shed their soulful fragrance like tears in the 

 darkness and silence of night. The gorse is most 

 fragrant at noon, when the sun shines brightest and 

 hottest. At such an hour when I approach a thicket 

 of furze, the wind blowing from it, I am always 

 tempted to cast myself down on the grass to lie for 

 an hour drinking the odour in. The effect is to make 

 me languid; to wish to lie till I sleep and live again 

 in dreams in another world, in a vast open-air 

 cathedral where a great festival and ceremony is 

 perpetually in progress, and acolytes, in scores and 

 hundreds, with beautiful bright faces, in flame-yellow 

 and orange surplices, are ever and ever coming 

 towards me swinging their censers until I am ready 

 to swoon in that heavenly incense. 



Yet, as I have said, this fragrance is not of the 

 higher order, since in its richness there lurks a sugges- 

 tion of flavours. Its powerful effect is probably partly 

 due to association with the sight-impressions the 

 blossoming plant has imparted to the mind of its 

 splendour. Many of our other wild flowers come 

 nearer to the spiritual quality in fragrance, like the 

 blossoms of the Pride of China ; also the evening 

 primrose in some of the most fragrant species where 



