170 A GARDEN DIARY 
like many larger ones we are never likely to clear 
up entirely to our satisfaction. There are 
moments in my experience when such a spot 
as this that I am thinking of, is in a sense more 
vivid to me away from it than if I were standing 
there in person; when every tuft of bog myrtle 
becomes clearly visible ; every yard of “drift” or 
of “boulder clay” shows in its entirety ; the very 
stones fallen from them, and lying like small 
cannon-balls upon the beach, being all able to 
be counted. The waves toss; the clouds roll 
wearily; the seaweed rises and falls, as it 
naturally would. No scene in a cinematograph 
could by any possibility be clearer. 
This is the vivid condition. An hour later 
one tries to conjure up the same familiar scene, 
and not a detail will rise to one’s bidding. Not 
a leaf, not a stone, not a wave will become 
manifest. Clearness is gone. A dull, blurred 
impression is all that remains. The landscape 
as a whole may be there, but its details are 
lost. That living, multitudinous - tinted fore- 
ground has vanished as though it had never 
existed. 
It must have been the scent of the bog plants 
which conferred that momentary impression upon 
me this morning. That scents “open the 
wards of memory with a key” we all know. 
They do more, for they sweep away for the 
moment those films which ordinarily cover the 
