Summary. 



Opinions vary among botanists conceming the origin of the cultivated 

 Pansies. Charles Darwin discussed the question in bis »Variation of Animals 

 and Plants under Domestication», but arrives at no definite conclusion, saying 

 on page 369: »Hence after having carefully compared numerous varieties, I gave 

 up the attempt as too difficult for any one except a professed botanist». 



My investigations have led to the following conclusions. 



The botanists of ancient days knew of only one kind of Viola, viz. Viola 

 odorata /.., and those of the Middle Ages were acquainted with no other. 



The heartsease or wild pansy, Viola tricolor L., was first mentioned and 

 described by O. Brunfels (1536), and L. Fuchs (1542), both Germans. The 

 latter relätes that »Herba Trinitatis» — the name by which the heartsease was 

 then known — was not only found wild, but was also cultivated as an orna- 

 mental plant in the gardens of German)'. 



The name Pansy, so far as I have been able to make out, is used for 

 the first time in botanical literature in 1537, by the Frenchman J. Ruellius, 

 where it occurs in the Latin form Pensea. 



R. DoDONiEUS, from the Netherlands, is the first to use the name Viola 

 tricolor for the heartsease. 



From the works of Dodon.eus, J. Dalechampius, and J. Gerarde, we learn 

 that during the latter part of the sixteenth Century the heartsease was used as 

 an ornamental plant in the Netherlands, France and England, and that the 

 flowers thereof showed no slight variety of colouring. 



J. Parkinson, in 1629, describes and delineates not only the common 

 Viola tricolor, but also a form with double flowers from gardens in England. 



From the middle of the seventeenth Century Viola tricolor exists as an 

 ornamental plant in Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. 



We learn from J. W. Weinmann, Ph. Miller, and D. Villars that Viola 

 tricolor was a very general ornamental plant in Germany, England, and France 

 during the eighteenth Century, and Weinmann's »Phytanthoza-iconographia» 

 published in 1745 (with coloured plates) enables us to form an exact idea of 

 the appearance of the pansies of that time, as the eight coloured figures repre- 

 senting pansies, show flowers that are neither larger nor otherwise coloured than 

 the varieties of Viola tricolor growing wild. 



^ Besides those small flowering V. tricolor pansies already mentioned, from 



9 



