The Perfume of an Evening Primrose. 241 
blossoms are all about me, for miles and for leagues: 
on that great level expanse, as if the morning wind 
had blown them out of that eastern sky and 
scattered their pale yellow stars in millions over 
the surface of the tall sere grass. 
I do not say that this shock of pleasure I have 
described, this vivid reproduction of a long past 
scene, 1s experienced each time I smell the flower ; 
it is experienced fully only at long intervals, after 
weeks and months, when the fragrance is, so to 
speak, new to me, and afterwards in a lesser degree 
on each repetition, until the feeling is exhausted. 
If I continue to smell again and again at the flower, 
IT do it only as a spur to memory; or in a mechanical 
way, Just as a person might always walk along a 
certain path with his eyes fixed on the ground, 
remembering that he once on a time dropped some 
valuable article there, and although he knows that 
it was lost irrecoverably, he still searches the 
ground for it. 
Other vegetable odours affect me in a similar 
way, but in a very much fainter degree, except in 
one or two cases. ‘Thus, the Lombardy poplar was 
one of the trees I first became acquainted with in 
childhood, and it has ever since been a pleasure to 
me to see it; but in spring, when its newly opened 
leaves give out their peculiar aroma, for a moment, 
when I first smell it, I am actually a boy again, 
among the tall poplar trees, their myriads of heart- 
shaped leaves rustling to the hot November wind, 
and sparkling like silver in the brilliant sunshine. 
R 
