And the night-blooming cercus--that uncanny white witch of a creature, with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood? But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They seem glad to start the nerves of human beings. The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the comfort warm within. The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of chaste praise. These are flowers which _look_ their fragrance; but there are those that startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner spirit. What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their gushes of delicious breath. The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon verbena--which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it deserves to be considered one--one can easily see why that is valued. What a refined, _spirituelle_ smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it, or Lady Jane Grey--or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells of. Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower--a yellowish, toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within those luckless mansions! But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms? Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak--as the infantile anemones, daisies, and innocents.