MABCH. 97 



" Pansies for thoughts," says SHAKSPEAEE, alluding 

 to the French origin of the name, pensee, thought, 

 or pensez a moi think of me, a garden equivalent to 

 " forget-me-not." " Love in idleness," and " Kiss me 

 at the garden gate," are rustic names showing the 

 pleasure which this familiar floral favourite was always 

 regarded. But alas, there is no smell to these more 

 showy violets. Form can be astonishingly varied by 

 horticultural art, and colour singularly modified, but 

 it is beyond the power of human skill to give odour 

 to the " Dog- Violet," or take it away from the sweet 

 one. Country botanists, who know well enough what 

 secluded lanes or distant dingles they must go to for 

 the sweet violets, have been not a little surprized in 

 the present day to find the Sweet Violet of their 

 mossy glens and meadows, actually degraded in the 

 " London Catalogue of the Botanical Society," to a 

 mere naturalized plant, as if it had stolen off from 

 captivity, and was no aboriginal native. To such an 

 extent may incredulity or absurd hypothesis carry a 

 closet manufacturer of a catalogue. But the violet- 

 embroidered vale, redolent of sweetness as we have 

 seen it, like snow-flakes covering the ground by the 

 brook side, in company with wood anemonies, never 

 asked man's aid for its location there, and no wanderer 

 among nature's sequestered scenes in the midland 

 counties would ever dream of stabling a sweet 

 violet ! * The colours of the flowers of the Viola odo- 

 rata are almost unaccountably varied chiefly white, 

 sometimes lilac or mulberry colour, or a deep purple- 

 blue. The latter variety seems to prefer pastures, or 



* In Floras and Botanical Catalogues, the t or dagger signifies a natu- 

 ralized plant. 



H 



