INTRODUCTION 
‘¢ Who hath the vertue to express the rare 
And curious vertues both of herbs and stones ? ”—George Herbert. 
Two centuries or more ago Gonzales Coques, a Fleming, 
painted his beautiful little pictures, now well known in 
the National Gallery, London, under the name of ‘“‘ The 
FiveSenses”—Taste, Touch or Feeling, Sme// or Fragrance, 
Hearing, and Seeing. Of all the five senses that of smell, 
or the sense of odours, is the most subtle and difficult to 
define, as it is also of all the senses the one least amenable 
to our control. We may avoid seeing, or tasting, or 
touching, but, alas! we cannot preserve our ears or our 
noses from the subtle influences of their surroundings. 
Again, the sense of smell is far more subtle than the sense 
of hearing. Sounds may be analysed and set down by 
notation, as in music, but who shall analyse and give to 
us a chromatic scale, so to speak, of the thousand and 
one whiffs of fragrance, or the myriads of odour waves 
that bombard the nose? The sight of a faded bit of 
some dear one’s writing—the faintest melody of a well- 
remembered tune—the flavour of some particular fruit 
or wine—the touch of a loved one’s hand or hair, arouse 
in us all many feelings and varied memories, but not 
one or any two or more of the senses can do this more 
potently than does the subtle fragrance of a room, a 
drawer, or the dainty kerchief, or even an old glove, a 
few withered rose-leaves, or faded: violets; a scented 
geranium leaf in an old letter even is enough to call up 
the most vivid memories from the vasty deep of a half- 
buried past. 
A I 
