MYSTERY OF THE MUSK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22520, 14 March 1935, Page 11

MYSTERY OF THE MUSK

For 15 years investigators have been on the trail of the lost property of the* musk plant, and still none has produced an explanation of its disappearance. Now electricity has been added to the fields of search (says the New York HeraldTribune), which already included meteorology, chemistry and biological mutation. As Sir W. Beach Thomas has suggested, this baffling change in a humble American wild flower may point toward “ some cardinal secret of growth.” The phenomenon had quietly become apparent—on European window sills and in the Canadian forest, in Australia as in England—before science woke to discover that a plant had stolen a march on the learned world and that observation came late. For the scent did not fade, but vanished. No scentless specimen had ever been reported before 1883, and since 1920 no scented musk has been found. Until some deep detective work reveals how Nature achieved the world-wide theft, an aura of the uncanny will surround the little old-fashioned “ monkey flower.” It is improbable that a single scented plant remains, for every report that one had turned up has proved false, though all aware of the mystery are alert. Had the confused war years not intervened just as the change began to be noticed by a few horticulturists, then scientists might have co-operated while scented specimens remained to' be studied, and so have caught an explanation, Perhaps something existing within the plant’s aromatic oil, but not of it, may have provided the fragrance; perhaps that something disappeared.