VIOLA. 179 



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

 between the petals sometimes three, sometimes four, it may 

 be all five up and down and produce variously fanged or 

 forked effects, feebly ophidian or diabolic. On the whole, a 

 plant entirely mismanaging itself, reprehensible and awk- 

 ward, with taints of worse than awkardness ; and clearly, no 

 true ' 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 Eunners pease, strawberries, 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. " Half-hidden from the eye ? " no ; but desiring at- 

 tention, or extension, or corpulence, or connection with any- 

 body else's family, still less. 



26. And if, at the time you read this, you can run out 

 and gather a true violet, and its leaf, you will find that the 

 flower grows from the very ground, out of a cluster of heart- 

 shaped leaves, becoming here a little rounder, there a little 

 sharper, but on the whole heart-shaped, and that is the 

 proper and essential form of the violet leaf. You will find also 

 that the flower has five petals ; and being held down by the 

 bent stalk, two of them bend back and up, as if resisting it ; 

 two expand at the sides ; and one, the principal, grows down- 

 wards, with its attached spur behind. So that the front view 

 of the flower must be some modification of this typical ar- 

 rangement, Fig. M, (for middle form). Now the statement 

 above quoted from Figuier, 16, means, if he had been able 

 to express himself, that the two lateral petals in the violet are 

 directed downwards, Fig. 11. A, and in the pansy upwards. 

 Fig. 11. c. And that, in the main, is true, and to be fixed 

 well and clearly in your mind. But in the real orders, one 

 *See Deucalion,' vol. ii., chap, i., p. 13, 18. 



