PART III 

 CHAPTER I 



HEARTSEASE, VIOLAS, AND VIOLETS 



n^HERE is probably no other family of hardy flowers 

 which has given our gardens anything more valuable 

 for their quaint beauty and their delicious fragrance than 

 the numerous race which includes Pansies, and the great 

 variety of sweet-scented Violets, with which most of us 

 have been familiar all our lives, and with which our 

 earliest floral recollections have probably been associated. 



Indigenous plants like these, which through long 

 generations have been improved by careful culture and 

 selection, and brought to a very high state of excellence, 

 are much more satisfactory objects for our care than 

 uncertain exotics, which often require a combination of 

 favourable circumstances, the failure of any one of which 

 brings disappointment and loss. 



A few very simple and elementary suggestions as 

 to the old family tree and its separate stems and branches 

 may be helpful to some of my readers. It may be 



189 



