VIOLA. 



kinship of its moro handsomely endowed twin-bearing cousin, on 

 branches of 4 inches in the early year. 



V. valderia. — The sinking fires of the race leap up once more 

 towards the end, with the last of our great alpino Pansies. V. valderia 

 is no more than a variety of V. cenisia, yet it is hard to sink its identity, 

 no less for the unusual beauty of its name, than on account of 

 the treasure's own character. It is a very rare form, peculiar to the 

 schists and granites of the Maritime Alps, North and South of the Ar- 

 gentera, revelling at far lower levels than would ever be tolerated by 

 the austerer-tempered V. cenisia, and never ascending into the high and 

 barren places of the hills, where alone you may hope for Mammola 

 rupina. It lives, however, in the same rocky screes and river-shingles 

 among the coarse blocks ; not running about, but forming a single 

 straggly tuffet from a single tap-root. Otherwise, though the foliage, 

 thoroughly villous, is of a greener colouring, the habit of the plant, 

 except in that most important point, does not diverge greatly from 

 that of V. cenisia, but the sham leaves at the base of the real ones are 

 undivided and like wee leaves themselves in V. cenisia, whereas in V. 

 valderia they are cut and gashed into some half a dozen unequal lobes, 

 of fringy effect along the stems. It thus has so much in common with 

 V. Dubyana, which it also resembles in its singleness of root. The 

 flowers, however, are precisely the purple and soft lavender-violet 

 pansy-faces, comfortable yet not plethoric, of V. cenisia. Their two 

 side wings, and the lip, have a pencilled moustache and minute 

 imperial of black velvet, that give special intelligence to their ex- 

 pression, as the little brilliant countenances smile up from the raw 

 and rosy granite debris with their delicate twinkling eyes of gold. 

 In cultivation V. valderia has long given more trouble than V. 

 cenisia and V. nummular iaefolia, owing principally to its softness of 

 habit, that makes it abhor travel to an inordinate degree. It so 

 dislikes a journey that it usually arrives as jam. However, this 

 unpleasant surprise (for the low proclivities of the plant had made one 

 hope it more invincible and hearty than any other of this high-alpine 

 raco), once faced successfully, V. valderia will grow as well as the best in 

 specially sunny open moraine, and continue to delight the whole summer 

 with its gentle purple pansios. It takes its lovely name, like the 

 synonymous Potentilla, from the Baths of Valdieri, deep under the 

 northern shadow of impending Argentera. Unlike the Baths, how- 

 ever, the violet sits in the sun ; and in the sun always, low or high, it 

 will always be found luxuriating in the limited district where it deve- 

 loped long ago before the days of tho great glaciers, and clung to life 

 through that trying time, by digging its feet deep into the grits of the 



(1,996) 465 II.— 2 o 



