BICKNELL: VIOLA OBLIQUA HILL AND OTHER VIOLETS 263 
not drawing the specific lines so closely as we may now do; Doctor 
Greene was right in supporting the name with his endorsement; 
Mr. Pollard in Britton’s Manual was exactly right in allowing 
Hill’s name to displace LeConte’s. Notwithstanding all this 
the name Viola obliqua will be searched for in vain in the violet 
writings of the day. 
The plant figured by Hill was not that extreme form of the 
species of slighter figure and narrower leaf that we seem to have 
set up as typical of Viola affinis. But it was of the same flexuous 
habit, the same grouping of foliage and flower, the same deep 
cordation and acuteness of the expanded leaf; the blades had the 
same pronouncedly crenate-serrate marginal pattern, and some 
of them were quite sufficiently narrow and attenuate to satisfy 
the most exacting affinis standard. It is no objection that other 
leaves were broadly ovate. Forms of the species, very usual 
forms, do produce just such broadly ovate leaves and in like way 
associated on the same plant with the more characteristic nar- 
rower ones. Such plants, and others much more strongly grown 
than the medium plant portrayed by Hill, are not possibly to be 
kept distinct by a name from the most reduced and delicate forms 
of the series, for the extreme phases are everywhere inextricably 
blended together through every avenue of intergradation. 
It must not be inferred that there is a particular form of Viola 
‘obliqua in which the flowers at some stage of their growth always 
become upturned. This trait of the flower is no more than a 
~ tendency in the general species which, in some plants, or colonies of 
plants, may be perfectly realized, while in others it is not seen at all 
- or proceeds no further than an opening out of the crooked tip of 
the peduncle causing the flower to stand away from the scapeina 
horizontal or an upwardly oblique position just asit may in many 
another violet. Noris the erect position of the flower at all extra- 
ordinary among violets. It is occasionally seen in other species 
although in no other known to me does it come to a well-established 
trait, and in no other than this, except rarely, have I seen the flowers 
strictly ‘‘ erect or peduncles perfectly straight to the very summit.” 
Just as our medium plant passes down into its smaller and 
more delicate forms so also, and with as gradual transformation, 
does it grow up into an every way larger violet having thicker 
