496 VIOLA ODORATA AND VIOLA HIRTA. 
1855. I may perhaps be considered presumptuous in wishing to 
correct so good an authority, but cannot subscribe to his opinion 
about the two plants. I have never found any difficulty im dis- 
tinguishing them one from the other even in a dry state; closely 
as they approximate at times, I have always found one of the 
diagnostics in Babington’s ‘Manual’ (third edition) constant, 
however much they may vary in other respects. He has in V. 
hirta “petioles with spreading hairs,” and in V. odorata “pe- 
tioles with defiexed hairs.’”? We see the pubescence allowed to 
form a distinction in Fragaria and Myosotis, why not also im 
Viola, if the character be constant ? 
I have enclosed specimens of different ages and from various 
localities, that you may see the plants on which I have formed 
my opinion, having been engaged last spring in trying without 
success to find some of the intermediate forms im which the cha- 
racters are so “awkwardly mixed up together ;” my impression 
being, that all the scented Violets, whatever the colour or how- 
ever faint the smell, will have the broadish leaves and deflexed 
or adpressed pubescence of V. odorata, and ought to be referred 
to it. The variation in colour is sometimes very great on our 
has soils; whilst other seasons, as the past (1856), there is scarcely 
a lavender, lilac, or white one to be found. I have seen the blue 
and highly scented V. odorata, removed from its native habitat 
when in flower and planted in the shady part of a garden, flowermg 
the next two seasons with white and nearly scentless flowers, with- 
out the form of the leaf or the pubescence changing in the least ; 
and if hirta be not distinct as a species from odorata, what is 
the cause of the one plant being so very different in appearance 
to the other at the most important period of its existence, even 
when growing side by side with it? At page 70 of your De- 
scriptive Botany you observe, ‘“ We never remember seeing the 
two species or varieties together.” I have many times seen them 
growing in company, as you will see by the specimens, but never 
any truly intermediate forms with them, and have always consi- 
dered V. odorata very variable, but V. hirta constant to its cha- 
racters. 
The most conspicuous and constant differential character I 
have seen between the two plants is, that in V. hirta the whole 
plant at the time of flowerimg is a rosette of small, narrowish 
leaves, with many flowers overtopping them, the leaves and leaf- 
