6 PANSY, VIOLA AND VIOLET 



capable of interaction, is to produce what, for want of a 

 better expression, we will call natural hybrids ; and it is 

 by no means impossible that the cultivated Pansies of 

 the early part of this century had their origin in some 

 such fashion as this, and that such a Botanical Garden 

 as that of Paris might well enough have given existence 

 to one at least of the garden races. In this, as in so 

 many cases, historical evidence is valueless on account of 

 its vagueness, and there are but three courses open to 

 one who wishes to work at such a question as this. One 

 is to institute careful morphological anatomical com- 

 parisons between the result and its supposed parents ; 

 another is to work backwards, and, as the modern plant 

 has presumably been produced by a synthesis, so to try 

 and resolve its parentage by an analysis to select, that is, 

 various seedlings as widely removed from the cultivated 

 form as possible, and so with their seedlings in their 

 turn, and thus bring into play the scientific principle 

 involved in that limited tendency to ' reversion ' which 

 all cultivated plants possess. The third method is to 

 endeavour to build up the Pansy again, as indeed M. 

 Carriere is said to have done, and to have thus produced 

 from the wild V. tricolor (whatever that may be) flowers 

 very like those of the cultivated Pansy." 



From these extracts, it will be seen that from Lord 

 Gambier and his co-pioneers we have had handed Jdown 

 to us the garden Pansy and from this, other workers 

 have produced the Tufted Pansy (Viola), by means of 

 cross fertilisation and selection, etc. 



We think, therefore, that the simplest plan will be to 

 classify the various types under five heads as follows : 



Show Pansy Fancy Pansy Continental Strains Tufted 

 Pansy Violettas (miniature flowered Tufted Pansies). 



