olfactory nerve, we are constantly led to
breathe impure air, and thus poison the body by neglecting the warning
given at the gate of the lungs. Persons who use perfumes are more
sensitive to the presence of a vitiated atmosphere than those who
consider the faculty of smelling as an almost useless gift.

In the early ages of the world the use of perfumes was in constant
practice, and it had the high sanction of Scriptural authority.

The patrons of perfumery have always been considered the most civilized
and refined people of the earth. If refinement consists in knowing how
to enjoy the faculties which we possess, then must we learn not only how
to distinguish the harmony of color and form, in order to please the
sight, the melody of sweet sounds to delight the ear; the comfort of
appropriate fabrics to cover the body, and to please the touch, but the
smelling faculty must be shown how to gratify itself with the
odoriferous products of the garden and the forest.

Pathologically considered, the use of perfumes is in the highest degree
prophylactic; the refreshing qualities of the citrine odors to an
invalid is well known. Health has often been restored when life and
death trembled in the balance, by the mere sprinkling of essence of
cedrat in a sick chamber.

The commercial value of flowers is of no mean importance to the wealth
of nations. But, vast as is the consumption of perfumes by the people
under the rule of the British Empire, little has been done in England
towards the establishment of flower-farms, or the production of the raw
odorous substances in demand by the manufacturing perfumers of Britain;
consequently nearly the whole are the produce of foreign countries.
However, I have every hope that ere long the subject will attract the
attention of the Society of Arts, and favorable results will doubtless
follow. Much of the waste land in England, and especially in Ireland,
could be very profitably employed if cultivated with odor-bearing
plants.

The climate of some of the British colonies especially fits them for the
production of odors from flowers that require elevated temperature to
bring them to perfection.

But for the lamented death of Mr. Charles Piesse,[A] Colonial Secretary
for Western Australia, I have every reason to believe that flower-farms
would have been established in that colony long ere the publication of
this work. Though thus personally frustrated in adapting a new and
useful descripti