34d NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANT'S. 
themselves, prolonged below, beneath their insertion, into a sort 
of membranous plate. Two of them are anterior, two lateral, and 
the fifth posterior, disposed in the bud in quincuncial præflora- 
tion. The corolla, very irregular, is polypetalous, and the pieces of 
Viola odorata. 

Via. 363. Fia. 364. Fia. 365. Fra. 366. 
Flower. Diagram. Sect, of flower (2). Flower with perianth 
taken away (4), 
three kinds. The two posterior of one kind, symmetrical to each 
other, differ in form, and often in colour, from the lateral ones. 
These covered by the two posterior sepals in præfloration, are also 
symmetrical to each other; they envelop in the bud the anterior 
sepal which alone is regular, formed of two equal halves, and which, 
instead of being flattened in its whole length like the others, dilates 
a little above its insertion into a hollow spur, more or less wide 
and arched, making a prominence in the interval of the two ante- 
rior sepals (fig. 364). The androceum is formed of five alterni- 
petalous stamens. Hach is composed of a two-celled introrse anther, 
dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts,” surmounted by a membranous 
prolongation of the connective, and of a very short filament broad 
and flattened. But while in the three posterior stamens the fila- 
ment bears no projection, in the two others the anterior edge is 
dilated into a kind of open spur, glandular at the apex, and descend- 

1 Generally darker than the other petals, and and in water spherical depressed with three 
of an even colour, while the anterior and lateral bands without papilla (V7. biflora, odorata), or 
petals often paler, of the same colour as each in the form of quadrangular or pentangular 
other, or but slightly different, are frequently prisms (V7. #ricolor), “with folds upon the 
spotted with purple more or less dark upon a angles, transparent; in water, ellipsoidal with 
light whitish or yellow ground. four or five bands, upon which are large papilla.” 
2 The pollen is ellipsoidal, with three furrows, (H. Moux, in Ann. Se. Nat., sér. 2, iii. 329), 
