STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 



SECTION I. 

 WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS 



VIOLETS. 



" The violet in her greenwood bower 



Where birchen boughs with hazel mingle, 

 May boast herself the fairest flower 

 In forest, glade or copsewood dingle." 



Scott. 



THERE is music and poetry in the very name" Violet." 

 In the forest wilderness, far removed from all our early 

 home associations, the word will call up, unbidden, a 

 host of sweet. memories of the old familiar land where as 

 children we were wont to roam among bowery lanes, and 

 to tread the well-worn pathways through green pastures 

 down by the hawthorn hedge, and along grassy banks 

 where grew in early spring Primroses, Bluebells, and 

 purple Violets. What dainty, sweet-smelling posies have 

 you and I, dear reader (I speak to the emigrants from the 

 dear Old Country), gathered on sunny March and April 

 days on those green banks and grassy meadows? How 

 many a root full of freshly opened Violets or Primroses 

 have we joyfully carried off to plant in our own little bits 

 of garden ground, there to fade and wither beneath the 

 glare of sunshine and drying winds. Little we heeded 



