A NOTE ON THE DOG VIOLET. 

 (BY J. C. MANSEL-PLEYDELL, ESQ., F.G.S., &c., &c.) 



Until the publication of the third edition of Sowerby's 

 " English Botany," about twelve years ago, there was much 

 confusion about the identity of the true Dog Violet. The name 

 had been applied in the former editions of that work, and 

 in all previous Manuals, to the plant with a root-stock 

 terminating in a primary, barren, leafy stem, with very short 

 internodes, and giving off, from axillary buds, lateral flowering 

 stems. Q-erarde's Viola canina sylvestris, 1597; Parkinson's Viola 

 sylvestris, 1640 ; J. Bauhin's Viola carulea Martia inodora sylvatica 

 in cacumine semen ferens, 1650 ; C. Bauhin's Viola Martia inodora 

 sylvestris, 1671; and Hudson's Viola canina are doubtless its 

 synonyms. The polymorphous forms of the Dog Violet did not 

 escape, however, their acute observation ; for instance, Gerarde 

 describes a variety having the leaves longer, narrower, and 

 sharper pointed, and of which he gives a figure. Dillenius, in 

 the third edition of Eay's Synopsis, mentions a variety, noticed 

 by Du Bois, much smaller, with a yellow spur. Hudson mentions 

 three varieties, including Dillenius' s ; and Smith gives two in his 

 English Flora, 1823, adding two new species Viola lactea (the 

 V. canina, var. 3, of Withering, and V. Euppia, of C. Allioni), 

 and Viola flavicornis (Dillenius' small variety). Mr. Hewett C- 

 Watson, who was the first botanist to call attention to the diffi- 

 culty of identifying the true Dog Violets, says (Phytologist, vol. 

 3, p. 638, 1849), "the apparent species are the following: 

 Gerarde' s Violet V. canina, of Gerarde and Smith ; Dillenius' 

 Violet V. flavicornis, of Smith in English Flora; and Smith's 

 Violet V. lactea, of Smith in English Flora." 



The modern continental botanists, on the authority of Fries, 

 have given the name of Viola sykatica to the Dog Violet which 



