28 PROSERPINA. 



interference ; the swollen varieties of it produced by 

 cultivation being all gross in outline and coarse in colour 

 by comparison. 



It is badly drawn even in the ' Flora Danica,' No. 623, 

 considered there apparently as a species escaped from 

 gardens ; the description of it being as follows : 



"Yiola tricolor hortensis repens, flore purpureo et 

 cceruleo, C. B. P., 199." (I don't know what C. B. P. 

 means.) " Passim, juxta villas." 



" Yiola tricolor,, caule triquetro diffuso, foliis oblongis 

 incisis, stipulis pinnatifidis," Linn. Systema Naturae, 185. 



33. " Near the country farms " does the Danish 

 botanist mean? the more luxuriant weedy character 

 probably acquired by it only in such neighbourhood ; 

 and, I suppose, various confusion and degeneration pos- 

 sible to it beyond other plants when once it leaves its 

 wild home. It is given by Sibthorpe from the Trojan 

 Olympus, with an exquisitely delicate leaf ; the flower de- 

 scribed as " triste et pallide violaceus," but coloured in 

 his plate full purple ; and as he does not say whether he 

 went up Olympus to gather it himself, or only saw it 

 brought down by the assistant whose lovely drawings 

 are yet at Oxford, I take leave to doubt his epithets. 

 That this should be the only Yiolet described in a f Flora 

 Grseca' extending to ten folio volumes, is a fact in 

 modern scientific history which I must leave the Pro- 

 fessor of Botany and the Dean of Christ Church to 

 explain. 



