am aware by smell and touch of the ground we tread and
the places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the odours are so
grouped that I know the character of the country, and can place a
hayfield, a country store, a garden, a barn, a grove of pines, a
farmhouse with the windows open.

The other day I went to walk toward a familiar wood. Suddenly a
disturbing odour made me pause in dismay. Then followed a peculiar,
measured jar, followed by dull, heavy thunder. I understood the odour
and the jar only too well. The trees were being cut down. We climbed the
stone wall to the left. It borders the wood which I have loved so long
that it seems to be my peculiar possession. But to-day an unfamiliar
rush of air and an unwonted outburst of sun told me that my tree friends
were gone. The place was empty, like a deserted dwelling. I stretched
out my hand. Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful,
sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches,
like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust
swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through
me at this ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love. But there is
no anger, no resentment in nature. The air is equally charged with the
odours of life and of destruction, for death equally with growth forever
ministers to all-conquering life. The sun shines as ever, and the winds
riot through the newly opened spaces. I know that a new forest will
spring where the old one stood, as beautiful, as beneficent.

Touch sensations are permanent and definite. Odours deviate and are
fugitive, changing in their shades, degrees, and location. There is
something else in odour which gives me a sense of distance. I should
call it horizon--the line where odour and fancy meet at the farthest
limit of scent.

Smell gives me more idea than touch or taste of the manner in which
sight and hearing probably discharge their functions. Touch seems to
reside in the object touched, because there is a contact of surfaces. In
smell there is no notion of relievo, and odour seems to reside not in
the object smelt, but in the organ. Since I smell a tree at a distance,
it is comprehensible to me that a person sees it without touching it. I
am not puzzled over the fact that he receives it as an image on his
retina without relievo, since my smell perceives the tree as a thin
sphere with no fullness or content. By themselves, odours sugg