Flowers and Gardens 



it. It is by no means sent forth only to 

 be despised not even the ape is that, 

 for we may admire its strength and easy 

 dexterity of limb. The Dog Violet is 

 well fitted for the place it occupies ; it is 

 a lively, pleasant, neat-looking flower, and 

 its blossoms are very lasting. But in the 

 qualities which touch us most it certainly 

 is deficient ; and on comparing it with 

 the Scented Violet, as we cannot possibly 

 help doing, since we first learnt to recog- 

 nise it by its defects when gathered in 

 mistake, the lesson intended seems ap- 

 parent. Yet beautiful as the Scented 

 Violet is, its colour will not compare with 

 that of the common Pinguicula or Butter- 

 wort, the Violet of the Marsh. In this 

 plant, two or three large flowers, shaped 

 not unlike the Violet, but on longer stalks, 

 and of far richer purple, rise up from a 

 circle of broad, flat leaves, of light yel- 

 lowish-green, ever wet with unctuous 

 secretion, and beautiful in their contrast 

 with the flowers beyond almost anything 

 I know. Yet one defect they have no 

 smell. Fragrance on the whole seems 

 less common in marsh and water plants. 

 We find it rather in the Thymes, Laven- 

 ders, Roses, and Myrtles, and the tenants 

 of a drier soil. Yet even in England 

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