CERTAIN VIOIvET NAMUS. 83 



years subsequently, and with Mr. Pollard's cordial assent, put 

 forward as V. papilionacca, Pursh.^ Now, when Mr. Bicknell 

 informs us that what he is contending for as the real V. ohliqua, 

 Hill, "is none other than the common violet we have been taught 

 to call Viola affinis, Le Conte," I begin to think Mr. Bicknell 

 and I are not at all of two very different opinions as to what plant 

 Hill's miserable figure was meant for. But we can not be found 

 at actual agreement unless we find . that each has the same V. 

 affinis in view, may be not then; I strongly doubt that either 

 he, or any other man that has been in New York lately except 

 Mr. Pollard has ever seen in its native soil just the plant on which 

 I restored, and as it appears quite effectually, the long unknown 

 or ignored V. affinis of Le Conte. What I had before me is a 

 plant locally plentiful in Maryland and Virginia, but the localities 

 are few. It can not, therefore, be called a common violet. For 

 the rest, the common plant of the Hudson River Region, and 

 across to the Connecticut, at least, by my own repeated obser- 

 vation, and which New England people are " taught to call V. 

 affinis," is so utterly different habitally, ecologically, and in general 

 specific characters, that I await only time and opportunity to 

 name and publish it as new; for I am sure it is so, and that from 

 my careful field study. It is less like the figure of Hill as to leaf- 

 pattern than is my District of Columbia V. affinis. I am not in 

 any position to dispute that my V. affinis may reach New Jersey 

 and Ivong Island, and that Mr. Bicknell may have met with it. 

 But it does not grow far up the Hudson, or the Connecticut, 

 where there abounds, as I have said, a beautiful woodland — - 

 rather low -woodland — violet of another nature and character, 

 which all Connecticut "is taught to call V. affinis." 



I shall now have at once to thank Mr. Bicknell for the infor- 

 mation, and humiliate myself in the confession that I think I 

 never knew until now that in Britton's Manual of a dozen years 

 since Mr. Pollard kad assigned the name V. ohliqua to my Le 

 Conte's V. affinis. The apologies for my ignorance are several; 

 though I make no apology for the fact that the Manuals and the 

 Illustrated Floras are the books least used by me of all. Seldom 

 is there anything in them for me. But all the botanical world 

 knows that for eight years past the best part of my time and 

 strength have been given to work far different in character from 

 critical taxonomic work. My few weeks of vacation bring me 



