perceive, have not their two horns regularly set _in_, but the five spiky
calyx-ends stick out between the petals--sometimes three, sometimes four,
it may be all five up and down--and produce variously fanged or forked
effects, feebly ophidian or diabolic. On the whole, a plant entirely
mismanaging itself,--reprehensible and awkward, with taints of worse than
awkwardness; and clearly, no true 'species,' but only a link.[2] And it
really is, as you will find presently, a link in two directions; it is half
violet, half pansy, a 'cur' among the Dogs, and a thoughtless thing among
the thoughtful. And being so, it is also a link between the entire violet
tribe and the Runners--pease, strawberries, and the like, whose glory is in
their speed; but a violet has no business whatever to run anywhere, being
appointed to stay where it was born, in extremely contented (if not
secluded) places. "Half-hidden from the eye?"--no; but desiring attention,
or extension, or corpulence, or connection with anybody else's family,
still less.

[Illustration: FIG. II.]

26. And if, at the time you read this, you can run out and gather a _true_
violet, and its leaf, you will find that the flower grows from the very
ground, out of a cluster of heart-shaped leaves, becoming here a little
rounder, there a little sharper, but on the whole heart-shaped, and that is
the proper and essential form of the violet leaf. You will find also that
the flower has five petals; and being held down by the bent stalk, two of
them bend back and up, as if resisting it; two expand at the sides; and
one, the principal, grows downwards, with its attached spur behind. So that
the front view of the flower must be _some_ modification of this typical
arrangement, Fig. M, (for middle form). Now the statement above quoted from
Figuier, § 16, means, if he had been able to express himself, that the two
lateral petals in the violet are directed downwards, Fig. II. A, and in the