1900 | Rich, — Some new acquaintances 203 
SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES. 
WILLIAM P. RICH. 
THE plant-hunter whose range of observation is restricted by the 
force of circumstances to a distance of not more than a day's journey 
to and from his home, and more often to a half-day's outing, gradually 
finds that his well-gleaned fields no longer offer him the novelties 
which once rendered buoyant his steps and cheered the long home- 
ward walk with pleasing anticipation of what some new discovery 
would prove to be. After several excursions in which nothing new is 
added tó his lists, however interesting and profitable they may be in 
other ways, his waning interest is one day suddenly revived, and his 
enthusiasm rekindled, as he comes across not only one new plant, 
which ordinarily would be satisfactory enough, but upon a numerous 
company of weeds, many of which he has never before seen. They 
prove to be a colony of recently introduced plants, and although 
these newcomers are regarded by some as of little account, and stig- 
matized as interlopers and vagrants, they are welcomed by the local 
botanist, affording him glimpses of the vegetation of distant regions 
which he can never expect to visit. 
These enterprising plants, not contented with the means furnished 
by nature for their dissemination, have in these later days taken to 
travelling by rail. They suddenly appear in vacant lots around 
freight yards, along railway banks, and on city dumps, with perhaps 
the best intentions of settling down for a permanent residence and the 
praiseworthy purpose of covering unsightly places with their verdure. 
Their reception, however, is not very cordial. The hand of man is 
against them, and they do not tarry long with us. The space they 
occupy is wanted for other purposes, and, like the Wandering Jew, 
they are soon forced to move on ; their coming and their going noted, 
however, with pleasure by the few observers interested in such things. 
A company of these tramps of the vegetable kingdom has during 
the last three years taken up a temporary abode on a railway bank 
at Dedham, Mass. Here they have flourished luxuriantly during the 
summer until the annual mowing of the weeds in August by the railway 
men, to which has been added the present year the burning over of 
the locality, so that it is probable that most of these chance visitors 
will be found here no more. In view of the certain extirpation of this 
interesting botanical settlement, many of the species having already 
