WOOD AND GARDEN 



and of the Bracken, so like the first smell of the sea 

 as you come near it after a long absence. 



How curiously scents of flowers and leaves fall into 

 classes — often one comes upon related smells running 

 into one another in not necessarily related plants. 

 There is a kind of scent that I sometimes meet with 

 about clumps of Brambles, a little like the waft of a 

 Fir wood ; it occurs again (quite naturally) in the first 

 taste of blackberry jam, and then turns up again in 

 Sweet Sultan. It is alHed to the smell of the dying 

 Strawberry leaves. 



The smell of the Primrose occurs again in a much 

 stronger and ranker form in the root-stock, and the 

 same thing happens with the Violets and Pansies ; in 

 Violets the plant-smell is pleasant, though without 

 the high perfume of the flower; but the smell of 

 an overgrown bed of Pansy-plants is rank to offen- 

 siveness. 



Perhaps the most delightful of all flower scents are 

 those whose tender and delicate quality makes one 

 wish for just a little more. Such a scent is that of 

 Apple-blossom, and of some small Pansies, and of the 

 wild Rose and the Honeysuckle. Among Roses alone 

 the variety and degree of sweet scent seems almost 

 infinite. To me the sweetest of all is the Provence, 

 the old Cabbage Rose of our gardens. When something 

 approaching this appears, as it frequently does, among 

 the hybrid perpetuals, I always greet it as the real 

 sweet Rose smell. One expects every Rose to be 



