138 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
“The Gods are happy. 
They turn on all sides 
Their shining eyes, 
And see below them 
The earth and men. 
They see the Heroes 
Sitting in the dark ship 
On the foamless, long-heaving 
Violet sea, 
At sunset nearing 
The Happy Islands.” 
Violet is the most refrangible of the colors of the 
spectrum. According to the undulatory theory of light, 
the number of vibrations of the ether necessary to pro- 
duce violet color is about 760 million million per second, 
and the wave-length in air about sixteen millionths of an 
inch. It is the reflection of such vibrations or waves 
that enables us to see the violets and appreciate their 
color. 
The sweet violet and the pansy, these two favorites 
of the genus, are so well known to us by cultivation that 
any allusion to them seems as familiar as if it referred to 
our native species; in many cases it is more familiar, 
owing to the fact that so little attention is paid to those 
which grow naturally and freely all about us. Yet our 
native species have qualities of their own which give 
them some claim upon us. Some of them are blue, some 
