THE SCENTS OF THE GARDEN 231 



which in the south of Europe is exaggerated ia the 

 case of tazetta into something distinctly unpleasant. 



What a delicate refinement there is in the scent of 

 the wild Wood-Violet ; it is never overdone. It seems 

 to me to be quite the best of all the violet-scents, just 

 because of its temperate quality. It gives exactly 

 enough, and never that perhaps-just-a-trifle-too-much 

 that may often be noticed about a bunch of frame- 

 Violets, and that also in the south is intensified to a 

 degree that is distinctly undesirable. For just as 

 colour may be strengthened to a paiuful glare, and 

 sound may be magnified to a torture, so even a sweet 

 scent may pass its appointed bounds and become an 

 overpoweringly evil smell. Even in England, several 

 of the LiHes, whose smell is delicious in open-air wafts, 

 cannot be borne in a room. In the south of Europe a 

 Tuberose cannot be brought indoors, and even at home I 

 remember one warm wet August how a plant of Balm 

 of Gilead (Oedronella triphylla) had its always powerful 

 but usually agreeably-aromatic smell so much ex- 

 aggerated that it smelt exactly like coal-gas ! . A 

 brother in Jamaica writes of the large white Jas- 

 mine : " It does not do to bring it indoors here ; the 

 scent is too strong. One day I thought there was a 

 dead rat under the floor (a thing which did happen 

 once), and behold, it was a glassful of fresh white 

 Jasmiae that was the offender ! " 



While on this less pleasant part of the subject, I 

 cannot help thinking of the horrible smell of the 



