There are some smells that are strangely pleasing to the country lover which are neither from fragrant flower nor leaf; one is the scent of the upturned earth, most heartily appreciated in early spring. The smell of a ploughed field is perhaps the best of all earthy scents, though what Bliss Carman calls "the racy smell of the forest loam" is always good. Another is the burning of weeds of garden rakings, "The spicy smoke Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be." A garden "weed-smother" always makes me think of my home garden, and my father, who used to stand by this burning weed-heap, raking in the withered leaves. Many such scents are pleasing chiefly through the power of association. [Illustration: Thyme-covered Graves.] The sense of smell in its psychological relations is most subtle:-- "The subtle power in perfume found, Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned. "And Nature holds in wood and field Her thousand sunlit censers still; To spells of flower and shrub we yield Against or with our will." Dr. Holmes notes that memory, imagination, sentiment, are most readily touched through the sense of smell. He tells of the associations borne to him by the scent of Marigold, of Life-everlasting, of an herb closet. Notwithstanding all these tributes to sweet scents and to the sense of smell, it is not deemed, save in poetry, wholly meet to dwell much on smells, even pleasant ones. To all who here sniff a little disdainfully at a whole chapter given to flower scents, let me repeat the Oriental proverb:-- "To raise Flowers is a Common Thing, God alone gives them Fragrance." Balmier far, and more stimulating and satisfying than the perfumes of most blossoms, is the scent of aromatic or balsamic leaves, of herbs, of green growing things. Sweetbrier, says Thoreau, is thus "thrice crowned: in fragrant leaf, tinted flower, and glossy fruit." Every spring we long, as Whittier wrote-- "To come to Bayberry scented slopes, And fragrant Fern and Groundmat vine, Breathe airs blown o'er holt and copse, Sweet with black Birch and Pine." All these scents of holt and copse are dear to New Englanders. I have tried to explain the reason for the charm to me of growing Thyme. It is not its beautiful perfume, its clear vivid green, its tiny fresh flowers, or the element of historic interest. Alphonse Karr gives another reason, a sentiment of gratitude. He says:-- "Thyme takes upon itself to embellish the parts of the earth which other plants disdain. If there is an arid, stony, dry soil, burnt up by the sun, it is there Thyme spreads its charming green beds, perfumed, close, thick, elastic, scattered over with little balls of blossom, pink in color, and of a delightful freshness."