140 PITTONIA. 
son had given us, in 1895, the precise date of publication of 
the issue of Rees’ Cyclopedia, which contained this genus. 
V. PAPILIONACEA, Pursh, Fl. i. 173 (1814). V. cucullata, 
Le Conte, N. Y. Lyc. ii. 137 (1828), not of Aiton. V. com- 
munis, Pollard, Bot. Gaz. xxvi. 336 (1898), not of Wittrock. 
V. obliqua, Schweinitz, Sillim. Journ. v. 60 (1822), and Britt. 
& Brown, FI. ii. 447 (1897) in part, (of Hill??), also V. ob- 
liqua, Greene, Pitt. iii. 149. My reasons for regarding this 
very common and very beautiful violet as V. papilionacea, 
Pursh, are several. Ofcourse Pursh’s diagnoses of his violets 
are all too brief, often if not always failing to touch the real 
essential characters by which the species are distinguishable; 
and I assume that,in the case of V. papilionacea, the specific 
adjective itself is about the best part of the diagnosis. This 
is true of hundreds of species, that the specific name is the 
best part of the specific character. The species of violet here 
under discussion has a more papilionaceous-looking corolla 
than any other violet known to me. The peculiarly long 
and narrow keel petal is always concave and boat-shaped, 
quite as Mr. Holm has shown in the drawing here repro- 
duced (Plate xii), and the side view of the whole corolla is 
uncommonly like that of a true papilionacea. Moreover, 
the whole of Pursh’s specific character, so far as it goes, is 
applicable to this species. It is true that, in his notes he 
describes the corolla as * blue,” whereas it is in our plant 
violet-purple. But a glance at Pursh’s pages in respect to 
the colors of violets reveals the fact that he was always 
wrong where it was a question of blue or purple; for all 
the blue-flowered sorts are described by him as with “ pale- 
blue” petals, while all those that have them violet he de- 
scribes as having them “ blue.” 
His statement that the hairs on the petals of his V. 
papilionacea are yellow was for a time, with me, a weighty 
objection, though the only objection, against accepting our 
plant for that species. I ean find, in the field, violets in 
