Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the COMMON, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HOODED BLUE VIOLET (V. obliqua; V. cucullata of Gray) has nevertheless established itself in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed description. From the three-cornered stars of the elastic capsules, the seeds are scattered abroad. Beards on the spurred lower petal and the two side petals give the bees a foothold when they turn head downward, as some must, to suck nectar. This attitude enables them to receive the pollen dusted on their abdomens, when they jar the flower, at a point nearest their pollen-collecting hairs. It is also an economical advantage to the flower which can sift the pollen downward on the bee instead of exposing it to the pollen-eating interlopers. Among the latter may be classed the bumblebees and butterflies whose long lips and tongues pilfer ad libitum. "For the proper visitors of the bearded violets," says Professor Robertson, "we must look to the small bees, among which the Osmias are the most important." When science was younger and hair splitting an uncommon indulgence of botanists, the EARLY BLUE VIOLET (Viola palmata) was thought to be simply a variety of the common purple violet, whose heart-shaped leaves frequently show a tendency to divide into lobes. But the early blue violet, however roundish or heart-shaped its early leaves may be, has the later ones variously divided into from three to thirteen lobes, often almost as much cut on the sides as the leaves of the bird's-foot violet. In dry soil, chiefly in the woods, this violet may be found from Southern Canada westward to Minnesota, and south to northern boundaries of the Gulf States. Only its side petals are bearded to form footrests for the insects that search for the deeply secreted nectar. Many butterflies visit this flower. On entering it a bee must first touch the stigma before any fresh golden pollen is released from the anther cone, and cross-fertilization naturally results.