2 LEAFLETS. 
A New Southern Violet. 
In a recent allusion to the geographical distribution and varia- 
tions of Viola pedata, I ventured the suggestion that it may in 
time be shown to consist of a number of definable species, or at 
least marked varieties (Pitt. v. 126). 
Having indicated as a varietal segregate the plant of the U. 8. 
midland prairie region, and which I shall here and hereafter 
denominate V. inornata, I wish to direct attention to a southern 
ally of the Middle Atlantic, V. pedata, which exhibits charac- 
ters so pronounced that I wonder no one hitherto has noted 
them. 
Before proceeding to the diagnosis of specimens I must make 
mention of the unpublished colored figure of supposed V. pedata 
made by Le Conte. As often as I have consulted that figure, so 
often has the conviction forced itself upon me that his subject 
must have been a form of V. pedata unseen by me, at least in a 
living state; a plant of remarkably slender habit, seven inches 
high from the crown of the rootstock to the extremity of the 
corolla, this last wanting but the sixteenth of an inch of being 
two inches from tip to tip of the light-blue petals; these last 
also wanting a certain firmness of texture in virtue of which 
the corolla of V. inornata at least, if not that of true H pedata, 
is flat and stiff-looking in its perfect expansion. But in the 
corolla as represented by Le Conte there is seen over and above 
their extraordinary size, a certain half-undulating easy grace in 
the spread of the petals which is foreign to the flower of north- 
ern and middle country V. pedata. 
It is well known that Le Conte’s admirable work on violets 
was done chiefly in the fleld and at the farther South—the Caro- 
linas, Georgia and I believe Alabama, and in our herbaria, 
among scores of V. pedata sheets—yes, hundreds of them—there 
are occasional specimens from the Carolinas southward which 
answer as well as dried specimens may, to this beautiful plate 
which Le Conte has left; and the specimens disclose one char- 
acter of importance which none have mentioned, that is, a re- 
markably prominent spur to the odd petal. ‘This organ is most 
conspicuous in a sheet of specimens collected on dry gravelly 
