CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 507 
found ; and they are so lovely together, the white ones so delicately 
tinged with purplish pink on the back of the petals, and the others so 
rich and varied in their tint. We call violets blue, yet it is not very 
correct, for they are of all hues, from full purple down to light pale 
lavender. The scentless violets, that come in May, are more truly 
blue. What are you studying now, Agnes ?” 
“Tam trying to find out for myself whether this is a Buttercup or 
not, Aunt Lucy, and cannot decide ; will you please to help me ?”— 
(Page 24). 
But we must not go on quoting about the Buttercup, nor about the 
Lesser Celandine, which is the flower the pretty Agnes is puzzled 
with, although Miss Twamley illustrates it with her masterly pencil, 
and with Wordsworth’s well-known lines. Yet one word more about 
violets, and we have done. It is interesting to know how widely this 
delicate and elegant little flower is scattered over the world. 
“T wonder if all countries have as beautiful early spring nosegays 
as we have found this morning,” said Agnes. ‘ Where do violets 
grow wild, besides England ?” 
« All over Europe,” replied Aunt Lucy; “and travellers have 
found them in many other parts. In Arabia they are abundant, and 
much celebrated by the poets ; also in Japan, where they flower from 
January to April. Desfontaines says both the blue and white are 
plentiful in the palm groves of Barbary. Hasselquist found it in Pa- 
lestine, and Loureiro near Canton, in China. Gerarde says it was 
customary in his time to make them into ‘garlands for the head, nose- 
gays and posies, which were delightful to look on, and pleasant to 
smell to; but he does not mention the scented ones as being wild. 
If we visit Wales this summer, we shall find the yellow violet on the 
mountains there, which Gerarde says will not grow in a garden, and 
I think it very likely.”—(Pege 27.) 
Mrs. Howitt’s Spring Song of the Violet concludes the chapter. 
We may mention that old Gerarde, whom Miss Twamley quotes 
more than once, was a London surgeon, one of the greatest botanists 
of his time (which was Shakspeare’s time); for he was chief gar- 
dener to the famous Lord Burleigh. 
We might enrich our pages with borrowing from Miss Twamley’s 
notices of the Oak, the Elm, the Willow, the Poplar, and many 
other of our trees; or, with even more pleasure, take sweet passages 
from her observations on the daffodil, the primrose, or the lily 
of the vale. But without pilfering from every chapter, and rob- 
bing the book of all the plates also, it would be impossible to give 
our readers an idea of the beauty and good sense of the publica- 
tion. Lessons of pure and unaffected morality occur here and there, 
which cannot fail to come home to the young hearts to which they are 
addressed : and the warmest philanthropy is evidently under the guid- 
ance, in the authoress’s well-ordered mind, of a sound ard healthy 
judgment. For a parent anxious that his children should be wor- 
shippers of nature, and yet turn their devotion to profitable uses; or 
