A Lapse in Scent
We all know the strange fact that musk, once a proverb for sweetness of smell, is now a scentless plant. A Gloucester- shire Rector suggests to me the fear that laurel is going the same way. Time was when the smell of the broken leaf was so pungent that young entomologists (as I well remember) used to use them in a poison bottle for the painless destruc- tion of moths and butterflies. Today from the laurels in the rectory garden emanates a perfume so mild that it could not harm a midge. Is such deficiency common or general? It is certainly true that some laurels have lost their one-time pungency, even when full allowance is made for the diminished sensitiveness of the antiquer senses. In regard to musk, whose loss of scent has wholly baffled the botanists, a Canadian correspondent once sent me a specimen, as he claimed, of odorous musk ; but the bouquet was found to con- tain an inconspicuous sprig of mint!
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