WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 



Violets. 



The violet in her greenwood bower 



Where birchen Ijoughs with hazel mingle, 



May boast herself the fairest flower 



In forest, glade or copsewood dingle. — Scott. 



t^^^^^HERE is music and poetry in the very name — " Violet." In the 

 forest wilderness, far removed from all our early home associa- 

 tions, the word will call up, unbidden, a host of sweet memories 

 of the old familiar land where, as children, we were wont to roam among 

 bowery lanes, and to tread the well-worn pathway through green pastures 

 down by the hawthorn hedge, and grassy banks, where grew in early spring, 

 Primroses, Blue-bells, and purple Violets. What dainty, sweet smelling 

 posies have you and I, dear reader, (I speak to the emigrants from the 

 dear Old Country) gathered on sunny March and April days on those 

 green banks and grassy meadows ? How many a root full of freshly 

 opened Violets or Primroses, have we joyfully carried off to plant in our 

 own little bits of garden ground, there to fade and wither beneath the 

 glare of sunshine and drying winds ; but little we heeded, the loss was 

 soon replaced. 



And still I doubt not but that \'iolets and Primroses, the Blue-bells 

 and the Cowslips yet bloom and flourish in the loved haunts of our 

 childhood. Year after year sees them bloom afresh — pure, sweet and 

 fragrant as when last we filled our laps and bosoms with their flowers or 

 twined them in garlands for our hair : but we change and grow old ; 

 God wills it so, and it is well ! Though Canada boasts of many members 

 of this charming family, there are none among our Violets so deeply 

 blue, or so deliciously fragrant, as the common English March Violet, 

 Viola odorata. This sweet flower bears away the crown from all 

 its fellows. One of our older poets (Sir Henry Wotton) has said, as if 

 in scorn of it, when compared with the rose. 



