close to the ground or under it.Then what need of the showy
blossoms hanging in the thicket above? Close inbreeding in the
vegetable world, as in the animal, ultimately produces degenerate
offspring; and although the showy lilac blossoms of the wild
peanut yield comparatively few cross-fertilized seeds, these are
quite sufficient to enable the vine to maintain those desired
features which are the inheritance from ancestors that struggled
in their day and generation after perfection. No plant dares
depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers alone for
offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing these
curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in
development, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers
dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid.

The boy who

"Drives home the cows from the pasture
Up through the long shady lane"

knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild
peanut. Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows,
unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines;
hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a
repellent folk-name,


VIOLETS
(Viola) Violet family

Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the