Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/116

 The leads are subject to much the same rules as those in Bridge.

See The Laws and Principles of Vint, edited by Frank W. Haddan (London, 1900).

 VINTON, FREDERIC PORTER (1846–), American portrait painter, was born at Bangor, Maine, on the 29th of January 1846. He was a pupil of Duveneck, of William M. Hunt in Boston, of Léon Bonnat and Jean Paid Laurens in Paris, and of the Royal Academy of Munich. In 1891 he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, New York.

 VIOL, a generic term for the bowed precursors of the (q.v.), but in England more specially applied to those immediate predecessors of the violin which are distinguished in Italy and Germany as the Gamba family. The chief characteristics of the viols were a flat back, sloping shoulders, “c”-shaped sound-holes, and a short finger-board with frets. All these features were changed or modified in the violin, the back becoming delicately arched, the shoulders reverting to the rounded outline of the guitar or troubadour fiddle, the shape of the sound-holes changing from “c” to “f,” and the fingerboard being carried considerably nearer the bridge. The viols, of which the origin may be traced to the 13th and 14th century German Minnesinger fiddle, characterized also by sloping shoulders, can hardly be said to have evolved into the violin. The latter was derived from the guitar-fiddle through the Italian lyre or viol lyra family, distinguished as da braccio and da gamba, and having early in the 17th century the outline and “f” sound holes of the violin. The viol family consisted of treble, alto, tenor and bass instruments, being further differentiated as da braccio or da gamba according to the position in which they were held against the arm or between the knees. The favourite viol da gamba, or division viol, frequently had a man or a woman's head instead of the scroll finish to the peg-box, and sometimes a few fine wire sympathetic strings tuned an octave higher than the strings in the bridge.

Michael Praetorius mentions no less than five sizes of the viol da gamba, the largest corresponding to the double bass, and in a table he notes the various accordances in use for each. He carefully distinguishes these instruments as violen and the viole da braccio (our violin family) as geigen. Of the latter he gives six sizes, the highest being the pochette with vaulted back, a rebec in fact, and the lowest corresponding to the violoncello, which he calls bass viol or geige da braccio.

 VIOLA [Fr. viole, Ger. Bratsche, Ital. viola, alto], the tenor member of the violin family. The construction of the viola is the same, but on a larger scale, as that of the (q.v.) The instrument is pitched a perfect fifth below the violin.

 VIOLET. The violets comprise a large botanical genus (Viola)—in which more than 200 species have been described—found principally in temperate or mountain regions of the northern hemisphere; they also occur in mountainous districts of South America and South and Tropical Africa, while a few are found in Australasia. The species are mostly low-growing herbs with alternate leaves provided with large leafy stipules (fig. 1). The flowers, which are solitary, or rarely in pairs, at the end of slender axillary flower-stalks, are very irregular in form, with five sepals prolonged at the base, and five petals, the lowest one larger than the others and with a spur, in which collects the honey secreted by the spurs of the two adjoining stamens. The five anthers are remarkable for the coloured processes which extend beyond the anther cells and form a sort of cone around the style (fig. 2). The ovary is superior and one-celled, with three parietal placentas and numerous ovules; it bears a single style, which ends in a dilated or hood-like stigma (fig. 3). The fruit is a capsule bursting loculicidally, i.e. through the centre of each of the three valves. By the contraction of the valves the small smooth seeds, which form a row down the centre, are shot out to some little distance from the parent plant.

The irregular construction of the flower is connected with fertilization by insect agency. To reach the honey in the spur of the flower, the insect must thrust its proboscis into the flower close under the globular head of the stigma. This lies in the anterior part of a groove fringed with hairs on the inferior petal. The anthers shed their pollen into this groove, either of themselves or when the pistil is shaken by the insertion of the bee's proboscis. The proboscis, passing down this groove to the spur, becomes dusted with pollen; as it is drawn back, it presses up the lip-like valve of the stigma so that no pollen can enter the stigmatic chamber; but as it enters the next flower it leaves some pollen on the upper surface of the valve, and thus cross-fertilization is effected. In the sweet violet, V. odorata and other species, inconspicuous permanently closed or “cleistogamic” flowers (fig. 4) occur of a greenish colour, so that they offer no attractions to insect visitors and their form is correspondingly regular.

The anthers are so situated that the pollen on escaping comes into contact with the stigma; in such flowers self-fertilization is compulsory and very effectual, as seeds in profusion are produced.

Several species of Viola are native to Great Britain. Viola canina (fig. 5) is the dog violet, many forms or subspecies of which are recognized; V. odorata, sweet violet, is highly prized for its fragrance, and in cultivation numerous varieties have originated. The Neapolitan or Parma violet (var. pallida plena) is a form with very sweet-scented, double, pale lavender flowers; var. sulphurea has shining deep green leaves and lemon-yellow flowers, deeper yellow in the centre, and with a pale-violet spur. Sweet violets like a rich, fairly heavy soil, with a north or north-west aspect if possible,