102 VIOLA PEDATA. BIRDS-FOOT VIOLET. 



" Not wholly can the heart unlearn 

 The lesson of its better hours ; 

 Nor yet has Time's dull footstep worn 

 To common dust that path of flowers." 



Our present species, Viola pcdata, or Birds-Foot Violet, 

 though we may so pleasantly recall it in the history of our ear- 

 lier years, is not the earliest to flower when springtime comes. 

 Some few species are ready with their delicate charms as 

 earl}- as the end of March, or by the first week in April, but the 

 " little birdie's foot," as the children pettingly call it, is seldom 

 seen before May. It makes up for its sluggishness, however, by 

 its superior attractions when it does come, for it is the largest 

 and the showiest of all our native species. Not only is it beau- 

 tiful in its flowers, but its delicately cut and divided leaves give 

 it an elegance which not one of our other species possesses. 

 The Birds-Foot Violet, also, has a sort of perception of our love 

 of variety, and therefore gives us many forms both of flowers and 

 foliage. This fact is singular enough when we consider it in 

 connection with the statement of a philosophic writer on English 

 Violets that, while the pansy, which belongs to the Violet family 

 {Viola tricolor), has "bent itself completely to our will, the 

 Violet proper stubbornly refuses to give us any change, and the 

 Violet of the present time is the old Violet of our fathers still." 

 To carry the fancy further, we might say that, hopeless of rival- 

 ling the pansy in the affections of the cultivator, the English 

 Violet wisely kept to its own, while our American species, there 

 being no native pansy to compete with it, is trying what it may 

 do to improve. It is remarkable, also, that one of the forms 

 which the Viola pcdata takes on is not unlike the pansy, as we 

 see by the example given in our plate. This form is by no 

 means uncommon, if we may judge by recent communications in 

 the " Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club," of New York, and 

 the writer of this has often had it sent to him as a curious va- 

 riety by friends in many of the Atlantic United States. In all 

 cases the two upper petals were those that had changed to the 



