Flowers and Gardens 



it. It is by no means sent forth only to 

 be despised — not even the ape is that, 

 for we may admire its strength and easy 

 dexterity of limb. The Dog Violet is 

 well fitted for the place it occupies ; it is 

 a lively, pleasant, neat-looking flower, and 

 its blossoms are very lasting. But in the 

 qualities which touch us most it certainly 

 is deficient ; and on comparing it with 

 the Scented Violet, as we cannot possibly 

 help doing, since we first learnt to recog- 

 nise it by its defects when gathered in 

 mistake, the lesson intended seems ap- 

 parent. Yet beautiful as the Scented 

 Violet is, its colour will not compare with 

 that of the common Pinguicula or Butter- 

 wort, the Violet of the Marsh. In this 

 plant, two or three large flowers, shaped 

 not unlike the Violet, but on longer stalks, 

 and of far richer purple, rise up from a 

 circle of broad, flat leaves, of light yel- 

 lowish-green, ever wet with unctuous 

 secretion, and beautiful in their contrast 

 with the flowers beyond almost anything 

 I know. Yet one defect — they have no 

 smell. Fragrance on the whole seems 

 less common in marsh and water plants. 

 We find it rather in the Thymes, Laven- 

 ders, Roses, and Myrtles, and the tenants 

 of a drier soil. Yet even in England 



42 



