

2O6 SHARP EYES 



which never even peep beyond their calyx. How few 

 of our wild-flower hunters know their "blue violet?" 



My illustration, the Viola cucullata, is a specimen 

 which grew in my city garden, a plant brought from 

 the woods and which soon made itself too much at 

 home. The singular cleft form of the leaf was the 

 cause of its original selection, a variety known as the 

 "hand leaf," and which is a frequent "sport" of this 

 species of violet. In its new quarters it devotes itself 

 particularly to a rank growth of its peculiar foliage, 

 showing but few flowers ; but in the late summer and 

 autumn, when no one ever thinks of a violet, the plant 

 is prolific in bloom, invisible to the general observer, but 

 easily seen on close examination of the soil at its root. 

 Every sunny day, even until the middle of November, 

 the three-cornered stars of the opening pods may be 

 seen by hundreds, and all the neighboring grass-plot 

 and borders are sown with violet seeds. 



