VIOLA. 



streams are born of the snow. Far and far through the scree the 

 Viola sends its thread-liko wandering roots, often growing among 

 blocks so big, and roaming so insatiably, that it becomes almost 

 impossible to gather up the remote ramitications of its rootage. It 

 may always be known by its habitat, where no other Violet dwells, 

 no less than by the dainty purple pansies here and there, and the 

 small, silky, iron-dark leafage of little, oval, scarcely scalloped leaves, 

 nestling among the stones and taking very much their own powdered 

 sombre greyness. It is a local but locally abundant high-alpine, the 

 "f that most difficult and lovely group. It is not, however, I 

 think, by preference a limestone species, as sometimes stated ; on 

 the M -at least, its name-place, it is most glorious in the last 



screes of the primary rocks that descend from the Nunda and Mont 

 Lamet and all that vast amphitheatre of precipice winch falls in 

 ps to the Clear Lake ; and in the Oberland is hardly less lovely 

 in the highest sandstones of the Schwarzhorn, there also among the 

 typical non-calcareous high-alpines, such as Ranunculus glacialis, 

 Oeum reptans, Androsace alpina. In cultivation V. cenisia is sadly 

 pernicketty and precious, fitted only for the underground-watered 

 moraine, but there prospering among its old friends, if experiment be 

 made with sound and well-rooted pieces. It is unalterably faithful 

 to the high elevations, rarely if ever descending in the river-shingles 

 like the rest, though here and there in the stony sweeps and rubbish- 

 dumps below the Hospice of the Mont Cenis a strayed reveller of a 

 tuft may very occasionally be found lying in a compact flare of 

 purple, concise and clumped in habit as it cannot be far up among 

 the barren rocks of the mountain. In many ranges of East and West 

 F. cenisia is replaced by other species or developments of the same 

 mountaineering habit. Both V. comollia and F. valderia are reckoned 

 as mere varieties of F. cenisia ; yet their habits and beauties are so 

 much their own that the gardener will always treat them as being 

 separate species, and as special species they will here be found in their 

 places, although no claim to specific rank is thereby made for them. 

 In the Pyrenees, however, exist one or two other forms, called F. 

 Lapeyrousei and F. vestita (they are probably one), which are more 

 densely tufted and less inclined to wander, more silky grey, too, in 

 the clumped rosettes, almost to the point of being velvety ; while the 



. - and the whole growth aro stouter and stronger than the frail, 

 delicate loveliness of Mammola rupina in her typical form upon her 

 original and typical mountain. 



V. chdmea is a pallid little palustris Violet from Greece. 



F. Clementiana (F. grandiflora, Griseb.) stands quite near to 



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