636 



Why so ? Because we have in this country a small group of bota- 

 nists, industrious and talented, and united in their efforts, who have 

 so thoroughly habituated themselves to study English plants through 

 foreign books and foreign labels, that they would now prefer adopting 

 a continental error, rather than they would adhere to an English ac- 

 curacy which is incompatible with the error. " Viola canina" thus 

 becomes a dog with a bad name, and will be forced to forego that 

 name which it has held for two centuries and upwards, with the uni- 

 versal consent and acceptance of British botanists. The fiat has gone 

 forth, that the Dog's Violet must cease to be " canina," and is to be- 

 come " sylvatica." 



Whither must the discarded name go ? If thus taken from the 

 species to which it originally and legitimately belonged, it were bet- 

 ter suppressed altogether, as the most likely course to avoid confusion 

 and cross-naming in future. Instead of this safer course, it is pro- 

 posed to restrict the name of " canina" to a different species, hitherto 

 unfamiliar to British botanists; overlooked by many of them, confused 

 with the Dog's Violet by several, and otherwise labelled by the rest. 

 The Viola flavicornis of Smith (or, at any rate, the species to which 

 that dwarf form belongs) is henceforth to become our Viola canina, as 

 it long has been the V. canina (more or less confused with the spe- 

 cies originally so named) of many continental botanists. 



Every collector of botanical specimens in England is acquainted 

 with the scentless violet which grows so copiously on hedge-banks, in 

 and about woods, on the borders of fields and commons ; producing 

 cordate leaves, usually smaller than those of the sweet violet, and 

 flowers of a lighter or more lilac tint. It was to this common and fa- 

 miliar species that our early botanical writers applied the name of 

 canina ; and in this application of the name they have been followed 

 by subsequent authors, up to the date of the second edition of Ba- 

 bington's ' Manual of British Botany ;' although, in this latter work, 

 the change of name from " canina" to " sylvatica" has been partially 

 made ; that is to say, the larger forms of the former have been sepa- 

 rated, and described under the latter name, by the author of the 

 Manual. He has, however, left the smaller forms of the old V. canina 

 still under that name, conglomerated with some forms of a different 

 species, the V. flavicornis of Smith. 



It appears to me a fact beyond question, that the Viola " canina 

 svlvestris" of Gerarde (Em.) was a name intended to distinguish the 

 scentless " wild or Dog's Violet" from the sweet violet ; the name 

 being expressly applied to a common sylvan species which was found 



