CERTAIN VIOLET NAMES. . 8 1 



Hill?" To the understanding of what I have said in the paper 

 cited, nothing is more needful than the remembrance of that 

 small crooked mark. Its meaning with me is very definite, namely, 

 that I am in doubt as to what the living plant really was to which 

 Hill gave that name. That crooked mark being there, and there 

 bearing its usual meaning, I can not reasonably be credited with 

 having "rescued" the name from ambiguity, or with having 

 sent it forth with "well established rights" as the name lor any 

 species. My meaning all the way along and to the end was, and 

 is, that to what species V. ohliqua as a name applies, is to me 

 uncertain. It has not received from me what Mr. Bicknell de- 

 nominates "reinstatement," except hypothetically, and that is 

 not reinstatement at all. The utmost accomplished by me in 

 that series of paragraphs is, a showing that the name may possibly 

 turn out to belong there, unless as much as this be made 

 out of my concluding words, that it is matter of probability, 

 which is of course coming nearer to positive affirmation than 

 is possibility; though neither amounts to the positive. I wish 

 that my friend in New York, while he was about it, had reproduced 

 my concluding statement in its integrity, and so had saved me 

 the trouble. 



" This species is the most common of all East-American 

 violets, preferring heavy but not wet soils, often growing in great 

 abundance in rather low copses or even somewhat dense moist 

 thickets. Its apetalous summer flowers are on very short hori- 

 zontal peduncles, the growing ovary being concealed under dead 

 foliage or the lighter mould about the base of the plant. I believe 

 that the species has several specific names already; but I am 

 confident that it can never be proven that it is not V. ohliqua, 

 Hill; and since that is the oldest possible name of it, I here 

 leave it under that designation ."^ 



Now if I well comprehend Mr. Bicknell's interpretation 

 of the last two or three lines, his view is that when I say it can 

 never be proven that a certain species is not V. ohliqua, Hill, 

 I have in effect neutralized, virtually eliminated my mark ol 

 doubt with which I began, so that thenceforward I would have 

 used V. ohliqua. Hill, simply and plainly for the violet I had in 

 view. Such never was my mind. The doubt expressed at the 

 heading of my paragraphs had not been, nor has it yet been re- 



^ Pittonia, vol. 3. p. 143 (December, 1896). 



