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 
