NOTES ON VIOLETS. 141 
plenty which exhibit white hairs set in the background of 
yellowish-white or greenish-white base of the petal, but no 
yellow hairs. Until the * yellow hairs" are found, I shall 
no longer believe that such exist, in any blue or purple 
violet. . 
About the best imaginable confirmation of the view that 
V. communis of Pollard is the V. papilionacea of Pursh 
exists in my library, in Le Conte’s beautiful water-color of 
what he knew to be the plant of Pursh. I say, of what he 
knew to be that, because he was on terms of familiar 
acquaintance with Pursh, and they two were contemporary 
specialists in the study of our violets. Théy knew each 
other's herbaria, and each other's mind in relation to the 
species of this genus; and although Le Conte at the time 
of the publishing of his monograph regarded V. papilio- 
nacea as identical with V. cucullata Ait. yet, at an earlier 
date, at the time when he made the drawing of V. papi- 
lionacea he labelled it by that name, as the unpublished 
plate in my possession shows. Ithink it probable that, at 
that earlier time he had not decided what was to be consid- 
ered as the true V. cucullata. Indeed, the unpublished 
figure which he made of what we now understand to be 
V. cucullata he left to the last without a name. 
It will be an interesting bit of information to those study- 
ing the violets of Maryland and the District of Columbia 
to know that Le Conte found Pursh's V. papilionacea 
“abundant on the Island of Analostan, in the Potomac 
River opposite Georgetown," and that the fine drawing of it 
Still extant after the lapse of at least eighty years, was 
doubtless made here in Washington, from specimens grown 
on that island ; while Pursh's type itself was from no farther 
away than “ near Philadelphia." 
V. MissounrENsIs. Acaulescent, 3 to 7 inches high at 
early and petaliferous flowering, the stoutish rhizomes as- 
cending and branched, the leaves and flowers quite numer- 
