188 PROSERPINA. 



41. IX. VIOLA SECLUSA. Monk's Violet. "Hirta," Flora 

 Danica, 618, " In fruticetis raro." A true wood violet, full but 

 dim in purple. Sowerby, 894, makes it paler. The leaves very 

 pure and severe in the Danish one ; longer in the English . 

 " Clothed on both sides with short, dense, hoary hairs." 



Also belongs to chalk or limestone only (Sowerby). 



X. VIOLA CANINA. Dog Violet. I have taken it for analysis 

 in my two plates, because its grace of form is too much de- 

 spised, and we owe much more of the beauty of spring to it, 

 in English mountain ground, than to the Regina. 



XL VIOLA CORNUTA. Cow Violet. Enough described already. 



XII. VIOLA RUPESTRIS. Crag Violet. On the high limestone 

 moors of Yorkshire, perhaps only an English form of Viola 

 Aurea, but so much larger, and so different in habit growing 

 on dry breezy downs, instead of in dripping caves that I 

 allow it, for the present, separate name and number.* 



42. 'For the present,' I say all this work in * Proserpina ' 

 being merely tentative, much to be modified by future students, 

 and therefore quite different from that of ' Deucalion/ which 

 is authoritative as far as it reaches, and will stand out like 

 a quartz dyke, as the sandy speculations of modern gossiping 

 geologists get washed away. 



But in the meantime, I must again solemnly warn my girl- 

 readers against all study of floral genesis and digestion. How 

 far flowers invite, or require, flies to interfere in their family 

 affairs which of them are carnivorous and what forms of 

 pestilence or infection are most favourable to some vegetable 

 and animal growths, let them leave the people to settle who 

 like, as Toinette says of the Doctor in the ' Malade Imaginaire ' 

 " y mettre le nez." I observe a paper in the last ' Contempo- 

 rary Eeview,' announcing for a discovery patent to all mankind 

 that the colours of flowers were made " to attract insects " ! f 



* It is, I believe, Sowerby's Viola Lutea, 721 of the old edition, there 

 painted with purple upper petals ; but he says in the text, " Petals 

 either all yellow, or the two uppermost are of a blue purple, the rest 

 yellow with a blue tinge : very often the whole are purple." 



f Did the wretch never hear bees in a lime tree then, or ever see one 

 on a star gentian ? 



