20.  I perceive, farther, that this lanky flower-stalk, bending a little in a crabbed, broken way, like an obstinate person tired, pushes itself up out of a still more stubborn, nondescript, hollow angular, dogseared gas-pipe of a stalk, with a section something like this,

[Illustration]

but no bigger than

[Illustration]

with a quantity of ill-made and ill-hemmed leaves on it, of no describable leaf-cloth or texture,—­not cressic, (though the thing does altogether look a good deal like a quite uneatable old watercress); not salvian, for there’s no look of warmth or comfort in them; not cauline, for there’s no juice in them; not dryad, for there’s no strength in them, nor apparent use:  they seem only there, as far as I can make out, to spoil the flower, and take the good out of my garden bed.  Nobody in the world could draw them, they are so mixed up together, and crumpled and hacked about, as if some ill-natured child had snipped them with blunt scissors, and an ill-natured cow chewed them a little afterwards and left them, proved for too tough or too bitter.

21.  Having now sufficiently observed, it seems to me, this incongruous plant, I proceed to ask myself, over it, M. Figuier’s question, ’Qu’est-ce c’est qu’un Pensee?’ Is this a violet—­or a pansy—­or a bad imitation of both?

Whereupon I try if it has any scent:  and to my much surprise, find it has a full and soft one—­which I suppose is what my gardener keeps it for!  According to Dr. Lindley, then, it must be a violet!  But according to M. Figuier,—­let me see, do its middle petals bend up, or down?

I think I’ll go and ask the gardener what he calls it.

22.  My gardener, on appeal to him, tells me it is the ‘Viola Cornuta,’ but that he does not know himself if it is violet or pansy.  I take my Loudon again, and find there were fifty-three species of violets, known in his days, of which, as it chances, Cornuta is exactly the last.

‘Horned violet’:  I said the green things were like horns!—­but what is one to say of, or to do to, scientific people, who first call the spur of the violet’s petal, horn, and then its calyx points, horns, and never define a ‘horn’ all the while!

Viola Cornuta, however, let it be; for the name does mean something, and is not false Latin.  But whether violet or pansy, I must look farther to find out.

23.  I take the Flora Danica, in which I at least am sure of finding whatever is done at all, done as well as honesty and care can; and look what species of violets it gives.

Nine, in the first ten volumes of it; four in their modern sequel (that I know of,—­I have had no time to examine the last issues).  Namely, in alphabetical order, with their present Latin, or tentative Latin, names; and in plain English, the senses intended by the hapless scientific people, in such their tentative Latin:—­