JULY. 295 



" Harlocks," or rather Charlock, a provincial name 

 given to another of the furrow-weeds, is doubtless the 

 Sinapus arvensis, or Wild Mustard, a plant far too 

 flaming and unprofitably gay for any useful purpose, 

 and detested by the farmer ; yet in turnip-fields its 

 golden streaks have often a fine artistical effect in 

 the landscape foreground, however blemishing to 

 agriculture in reality. The Black Mustard (Sinapis 

 nigra), an allied species, stalks upon the banks of 

 rivers a truly gigantic weed, yet not inharmonious 

 when combined with patches of the blue Vicia cracca, 

 or thick masses of the creeping Plume Thistle (Gnicus 

 arvensis), whose innumerable purple flowers are gem- 

 med with ringlet, copper, or peacock butterflies, 

 waving their wings in the sun. This creeping Thistle, 

 spreading in all directions, and a terrible infester of 

 the borders of corn-fields and roads, and which in the 

 sestival period lifts up its purple or white " touch-me- 

 not" heads so conspicuously, tempting, however, at 

 the same time, numerous flies and coleopterous insects 

 to alight upon it, is what CUETIS has emphatically 

 denominated " the cursed thistle" and with the rank 

 venomous spotted-stemmed Hemlock, now arrived at 

 its utmost luxuriance, might well have been added to 

 LEAK'S bitter emblematical crown. 



A volume might indeed be made up solely from the 

 weeds of agriculture, so numerous are the vegetable 

 squatters that appear to dispute man's possession 

 wherever he turns up the ground. Some dodge his 

 footsteps even across the ocean, and domesticate 

 themselves upon his confines, so that weeds, like 

 troubles, are ever attendant at his side. How strange 

 that man, in his onward progress should break up the 



