78 ON VIOLA HIRTA AND ODORATA. 
triangular, emarginate at the base only; stipules lnear-acute, 
strongly glandular-ciliated. One or many lateral stems, procum- 
bent, not rooting, herbaceous, bearing flowers the first year of 
their development. Rhizome short, knotty, scaly, branched.— 
Plant more or less downy or hairy; flowers white, slightly violet 
before expansion. 
8. pungens. Spur acute. 
Has. Environs of Lyons, Besancon, Nancy, Grenoble. 
V. oporata, L. sp. 1824: DC. fl. fr. 4, p. 803: Dub. bot. 63: 
Lois. gall. 1, p. 181: Mut. fl. fr.1, p. 118: Rehb. tc. 68, f. 
4498.—Flowers odorous. Sepals oval-oblong, obtuse. The four 
upper petals entire, the lowest emarginate, the two lateral closely 
ciliated. Capsule downy, very rarely glabrous. Leaves largely | 
oval and deeply heart-shaped, those of the stolons of the ear 
reniform ; stipules oval, acuminate, larger than in I’. alba. La- 
teral stems procumbent, rooting, somewhat shrubby, bearing 
flowers only in the second year of their development.—Plant pu- 
berulent or pubescent ; flowers violet or white. 
Has. Hedges and hillocks; the variety with a glabrous cap- 
sule at Besancon.”—Flore de France, vol. ii. p. 176-7. 
My own conviction with regard to these plants is that hinted 
at in the ‘Cybele Britannica’ (vol. 1. p. 175), which has been 
advocated on the Continent by the learned author of the ‘ Rhein- 
ische Flora,’ viz. that they are modifications of a single specific 
type, produced by the influences of situation. So far as I have 
had an opportunity of observing them, hirta is the plant of woods 
and banks, in limestone districts, and of dry sandy situations, 
in a word, of what Thurmann (vide ‘ Phytologist,’ vol. i. p. 918) 
calls dysgeogenous, lands (terrains dysgéogénes) ; odorata (in- 
cluding alba,* which I do not know that any one in this country 
has considered as distinct from it) of gardens, hedge-banks in 
cultivated neighbourhoods, thickets and copses in districts not 
specially dysgeogenous. I would ask any botanist who has been 
in the habit of collecting them, whether he has not frequently 
found modifications, in which the characters assigned above as 
diagnostic were awkwardly mixed up together (say, for instance, 
a stoloniferous rhizome in combination with petioles thickly 
* Between these two, z. e. odorata and alba, an intermediate form is V. odorata 
lilacina of Rossmiisler, “ sarmentosa, sepalis lingulato-oblongis patentibus obtusis, 
floribus llacino variegatis.”— Vide Flo. Excurs. p. 705. 
