DISAPPEARING SCENTS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 7, 9 January 1925, Page 9

DISAPPEARING SCENTS

Think for a 'moment of the scent* that are bound to be sacrificed to- circumstances and civilisation, says the editor of "The Woman's Magazine." •There is. wood-smoke, for instance. Most of us, fortunately, have met "at one time or another in the country the sweet but indescribable odour of burning applewood. There is no other scent like itr—though, for the matter of that, it is seldom that any two flower of woodland odours are 5 at all alike. Nature is no more limited in the matter of scents than she is in the shape of leaves or her cloud designs. Ana the scent of binning applewood is different irom the scent of burning pineknots, though each is delightful; and the smoke from oak twigs, or old oak driftwood, is another species of incense never to be forgotten. : Yet since wood is becoming- so pre-^ cious, each year finds fewer and fewer country fires able to indulge in the luxury M burning wood; while for.the town dweller, the hearth \ fire itself is fast being extinguished in favour of gas electricity, hotwater pipes, or the anthracite stove, I know it can't be helped. Housework must be reduced somehow. But, oh! what was lose by the exchange! Another sweet scent of the countryside _ that js really disappearingthough, perhaps, not as far gone at present as the scent of the wood fire-is the odour, which is really a mixture of several odours, commonly described as new-mown hay; One needs to spend much time m the country to realise how thusi most delicious scent is vanishing with the advance of civilisationli t£ 8 matter of agriculture. " The almond-like perfume that has always been associated with hayfields is largely due to Sweet Verm/ grae Many town dwellers who do not see the fields when they show.,their lovely varlety of, blossoms and seeds, 'think that grass is much the same everywhere. MIT 7 \ hu merely a car*et °f green blades to them, with nothing to distinguish one blade from another. Yet there are about fifty varieties of ~rltl Ibe1 be found in ordinary English melS ?«V e