296 WILD FLOWERS OF 



beauty-spots of nature, and gather only noxious weeds 

 about his home, too symbolical of the 



" Wilder'd spots choak'd up with sorrow's weeds, 

 That send around, alas, too many seeds ;" * 



and which morally blight his hopes, and come up con- 

 trary to his expectations ! An American botanist has 

 observed that New England has become the garden 

 of European weeds ; so numerous do they swarm in 

 some of the counties of Massachusets, near the coast, 

 that the exotics almost outnumber the native plants, f 

 So in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, in South America, 

 a huge African Thistle (Car duns cyanoides), having by 

 some means crossed the sea and established itself 

 upon the plains, has now formed TJiistleries like 

 forests, extending for hundreds of miles, and in the 

 flowering season completely obscuring the roads. 

 When North America was first colonized, the Indians 

 remarked a plant new to them as occurring at every 

 white man's plantation, and to which accordingly they 

 gave the name of " Englishman's foot." This was 

 the common Waybread (Plantago major). So, in like 

 manner, in the present day, Sir T. MITCHELL states, 

 that wherever a sheep or cattle station is established 

 in Australia, the common Horehound is sure to spring 

 up in great abundance. Sir CHARLES L^ELL, also, in 

 his Second Visit to America, noticed many European 

 plants making their way even to the banks of the 

 Ohio, among which he notes the common Chamomile. 

 Doubtless the same law of vegetable immigration has 

 brought many alien plants to our own shores, to 

 which, according to the length of time they have been 



* CLARIS 



t Quoted in LVELL'S Second Vitit to the United States, vol. i. p. 5?. 



