I. VIOLA. 21 



over. I dare not pull it straight, or should break it, but 

 it overlaps my two-foot rule considerably, and there are 

 two inches besides of root, which are merely under- 

 ground stem, very thin and wretched, as the rest of it is 

 merely root above ground, very thick and bloated. (I 

 begin actually to be a little awed at it, as I should be by 

 a green snake only the snake would be prettier.) The 

 flowers also, I perceive, have not their two horns regu- 

 larlv set in, but the five spiky calyx-ends stick out be- 

 tween the petals sometimes three, sometimes four, it 

 iniiy be all five up and down and produce variously 

 fanged of forked effects, feebly ophidian or diabolic. 

 On the whole, a plant entirely mismanaging itself, 

 reprehensible and awkward, with taints of worse than 

 awkwardness ; and clearly, no true k species,' but only a 

 link.* And it really is, as you will find presently, a 

 link in two directions ; it is half violet, half pansy, a 

 ' cur' among the Dogs, and a thoughtless thing among 

 the thoughtful. And being so, it is also a link between 

 the entire violet tribe and the Runners pease, straw- 

 berries, and the like, whose glory is in their speed ; but 

 a violet has no business whatever to run anywhere, 

 being appointed to stay where it was born, in extremely 

 contented (if not secluded) places. u Half-hidden from 

 the eye?'' no; but desiring attention, or extension, or 

 corpulence, or connection with anybody else's family, 

 still I 



* See ' Deucalion/ vol. ii., chap, i., p. 12, 18. 



