64 Professor George Lawson on the 



111 addition to the scientific names of New Zealand plants 

 in the preceding list, those applied by the settlers and 

 natives arc also given, so far as they are known, as by such 

 names collectors can get any kinds of seeds they may be 

 in want of, with more ease and certainty than by using the 

 botanical names only. 



On the British- American S'pccics of the Genus Viola. By 

 Professor Geokge Lawson, Dalhousie College, Halifax. 



(Read lltli March 1880). 



In this paper the author states that his object is to 

 interest botanists in the study of a lowly but beautiful 

 family of plants whose headquarters are in the temperate 

 regions of America, but whose relations to each other as 

 species, varieties, or hybrids, are as yet imperfectly known. 



He has some of the related species in cultivation for the 

 purpose of studying the remarkable variations in form, 

 texture, and size of organs, of the same individual plants at 

 different periods of the year, and he hopes that other 

 botanists and cultivators may be induced to undertake a 

 careful study of ■ the living plants in the same way, which 

 seems to hold out the only hope of arriving at satisfactory 

 conclusions. 



The number of British-American species, not counting 

 varieties, is twenty. Of these, eight grow within the limits 

 of the Nova Scotia peninsula, and four others are not 

 unlikely, sooner or later, to be added. 



The species are divided into four groups : — (1) those with 

 long and thick fleshy rhizomes, sending up annually radical 

 leaves and flowers from terminal buds ; (2) those with 

 rhizomes sending up annually long-stalked radical leaves 

 and leafy flower-shoots ; (3) those with slender and woody 

 roots and stems branching into annual leafy flower-shoots ; 

 (4) those that have permanent and leafy stems and leafy 

 stipules. 



The distinctive characters of each species and of its 

 varieties are pointed out, and also the geographical and 

 local distribution of the various forms, which in many 

 cases has been incorrectly indicated in published works. 



