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 Pensée?' 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