The Scents of Flowers 



in England, and though seed vessels are formed, 

 perfect seed is never produced here, for apparently 

 no British moth can or will do the required work. 

 A large volume might be written, and more 

 than one has been written, on the different attrac- 

 tions which different plants offer to the insects 

 which are necessary to them, and among these 

 attractions scent holds a chief place. But this 

 does not prove, and as far as I know it has not 

 yet been proved, that scents are formed in flowers 

 to attract or ward off insects and other animals, 

 and, to my mind, the explanation goes a very 

 small way to account for the existence of scents, 

 which, as I have already said, seem to me to be 

 so far essential parts of the plant that in some 

 way, which I cannot in the least explain, the 

 plant is imperfect without its own peculiar scent, 

 so imperfect that the life of the plant cannot be 

 completely carried on if the scent or the glands 

 containing the scent are absent. Yet I do not 

 suppose from this that scent can ever form a 

 scientific differentia between one genus and an- 

 other, or between one species and another, for we 

 must allow that nothing can form such a differentia 

 which is impalpable to the touch or invisible. 

 Lucretius, indeed, held that odours, though in- 

 visible, had bodily substance, and in his desire to 

 explain everything in nature he proved his point 

 by the assertion that odours strike the nostrils : — 



" Omnia corporea constare necesse est 

 Natura, quoniam sensus impellere possunt ; " 



H 113 



