A GARDEN DIARY 171 
mental eye, so that during that moment we really 
do see. Of all scents commend me for this 
awakening quality to the boggy ones. They 
alone in my experience are really transformatory. 
For the brief time that their aroma is in one’s 
nostrils one actually zs in the place that they 
recall. 
It is a proof of the demoralising effect of 
ownership that one of my first impulses nowa- 
days is a desire to transfer the plants that I see, 
sometimes that I merely remember, from where 
they are to where I happen to want them. Yet, 
when one thinks of it, what an outrage! Why 
should one desire to do anything of the sort? 
Conceive the contrast, the downfall; the roomi- 
ness, the elemental breadth, the cool, rain-satu- 
rated comfort of the one setting; the cramped 
limitation, the unpalatable dryness of the other. 
Not that I would for worlds disparage our own 
faithful coppice ; to do so would be to show my- 
self the merest of ingrates. Was I not an alien, 
and did it not befriend me? Was I not roofless, 
and did it not offer its soil for us to lift a roof 
over? Still, when one tries to place the one 
scene beside the other the contrast becomes 
farcical. The very wind—the cold, unsentimental 
wind—must be sensible of such a difference. 
How much more then a root-extending, acutely 
sensitive, living thing ! 
I have a profound affection for bog plants, 
