VIOLAS OR TUFTED PANSIES 21 



the Garden, who at once recognised a new strain, and 

 promised to figure the variety in the Garden. Such is the 

 true history of Violetta, one of the most popular of the ray- 

 less tufted Pansy family. Violetta has proved the mother 

 of thousands of a rayless race, some better, some worse 

 than the parent. Violetta pollen crossed with a white Self 

 with a few rays gave Sylvia, too well known to require 

 description. Sylvia crossed with a Peacock Pansy gave 

 me Border Witch a singular flower, which, in its best 

 dress, in moist weather is very striking. I found, how- 

 ever, that this Pansy crossing was too much, for out of a 

 hundred and fifty seedlings Border Witch was the only one 

 without rays. Mr. Robinson has more than any one ad- 

 vanced the strain of rayless Violas. Many of them have 

 been figured in the Garden and in other magazines, and he 

 put me under a deep debt of gratitude in dedicating a 

 volume of his beautiful publication to a humble amateur 

 in acknowledgment of original work." 



In hybridising or crossing wild varieties of Violas, it is 

 necessary that the pollen should be taken from the culti- 

 vated species of Pansy and dusted over the pistil ; that is, 

 the wild species should be the mother. Pollen taken from 

 V. cornuta t for instance, will, if put on the common 

 Garden Pansy, only give seed which will produce Bedding 

 Pansies, not the sturdy, tufted-rooted, dwarf strain, which 

 Violetta now represents. 



