TJie Country Gentleman s Magazine 



133 



"WiXt €avt)eu. 



THE PANSY 



SHAKSPERE speaks, in " Midsummer 

 Night's Dream," of — 



" A little western flower, 



Before milk-white ; now purple with love's wound. 

 And maidens call it ' Love-in-idleness.' " 



Again, in '•' Hamlet," Ophelia says — 



" There is Pansies, that is for thoughts." 



Other homely English names have been given 

 the same flower, such as " Jump-up-and-kiss- 

 me," " Call-rae-to-you," &c. ; but the gene- 

 rally-accepted and acknowledged name is 

 Heartsease. Whence its derivation I have no 

 data wherewith to explain. Certainly the 

 name is a very poetical and expressive one, 

 and such a name as might not unfittingly 

 suggest itself to the occasional suffering way- 

 farer o'er life's rugged paths, when contem- 

 plating the expressive and transplendent 

 beauty of some of the most striking varieties. 

 The Pansy belongs to the natural order Violet- 

 worts, or Violets, of which there are at least 

 six or seven score distinct species, scattered 

 over almost all known countries, within the 

 influence of the cooler temperate zone. 

 Viola tricolor, or the three-coloured Violet, 

 of which species there are about a dozen 

 distinct or specific varieties, is the actual 

 parent of the florist's or garden varieties of 

 Viola, called Pansies. 



Here I would make one remark regarding 

 our great bard's remarkabove, whereinhe says, 

 "Before milk-white." It would be difficult at 

 this distance of time to refute what appears to 

 be a very great error — an error which seems 

 the more obvious when we know how difficult 

 it would have been to have produced such 

 variety of illimitable colours and markings 

 from a simple white parent. Rather am 

 I inclined to think Shakspere, though 

 a good botanist probably, was, nevertheless. 



little advised in the equally intricate know- 

 ledge of the florist. I admit that there are 

 Violas variously white-bloomed, though to 

 none of them should I look for a likely parent 

 for the Heartsease. 



Another variety of Viola, the Horned 

 Violet of the Pyrenees (V. cornuta), a 

 perpetual summer bloomer, is being great- 

 ly improved at the present time in our 

 midst. So much so, indeed, that some more 

 recent varieties, such as V, cornuta " Magni- 

 ficent," begin to assume the circular-shaped 

 blooms, and will doubtless become in the 

 end a thoroughly assimilated and greatly im- 

 proved class, in so far as extended blooming 

 capabihties are concerned. I scarcely need 

 remark that the florist's ideal Pansy, or 

 Pensk, as they describe it in France, has a 

 purely circular outline. This is in no wise a 

 surety that the blooming capabilities are good, 

 or the habit. Hence it is a fact, that a far 

 greater display is made by the use of select 

 free blooming seedlings, somewhat deficient 

 in this respect perhaps. 



And it is such seedlings I would recom- 

 mend as being especially applicable to villa 

 gardens. Knowing the Heartsease is a gene- 

 ral favourite and old acquaintance with every 

 one who has "a heart" in a flower garden, 

 as it begins to open its modest, but lovely 

 flowers as soon as the snow clears off 

 in spring, and continues to enliven the bor- 

 ders more or less until snow comes again. The 

 months of May and June exhibit them in the 

 greatest perfection, however. 



The Pansy should be treated as a biennial, 

 though it adapts itself well to the propaga- 

 tor's wishes, as it will root freely, either made 

 into the form of cuttings, or by dibbling into 

 rich soil many small divisions formed of one 

 single root. When cuttings are chosen as 



