THE LESSON OF THE DAISIES. 



No one who has chanced to make a somewhat extended tour through the 

 farm-lands of any part of the middle states during the last of June or the 

 first of July can have failed to notice how large a fraction of the area was 

 white for the harvest — a harvest not of grain, but of Ox-eye Daisies. Fields 

 of buckwheat at the height of their bloom were never whiter than many 

 lowlands which once were rich meadows, and many hillsides which once 

 were rich pastures. The daisies are so prevalent and luxurious this year 

 that a stranger might suspect that all the farmers had gone into the busi- 

 ness of floriculture, but a few questions will soon dispel this illusion, for 

 the gi-owers of the daisies very rarely appreciate their beauty. It is a 

 genuine and destructive invasion, and yet the daisies have not conquered 

 the meadows; they have merely stepped in to occupy and possess the soil 

 which the grass had abandoned. The worst of it is that the great majority 

 of the tillers of the soil do not apprehend the true condition of things, and 

 while they bewail the fate which forces them to harvest daisies instead of 

 grain or hay, they do not realize the fact that they have invited the attack 

 and encouraged the invaders. 



Occasionally a farmer is heard to ask how these weeds can be killed, but 

 he does not realize that if by some rapid process they could all be dispatched 

 new legions would fill their places at once if the conditions which they enjoy 

 remain. What farmers need to comprehend is that without some radical 

 mistake in the management of their land the daisies never would have 

 gained such a foothold. All plants, including weeds, settle and thrive 

 where the competition for life is such that they can enter into it and pros- 

 per. A good stand of grass leaves no room nor any hope for weeds. It is 

 not in well-tilled fields that Canada thistles flourish, but in neglected pas- 

 tures and by the roadsides. In the contest with the best agricultural prac- 

 tice they cannot prevail. It is in the untllled plains of the west or in the 

 tilled regions where there is mile after mile of plowed land producing only 

 eight or nine bushels of wheat to the acre year after year, without any 

 rotation, where the Russian thistle is a natural and inevitable intruder. 



The remedy for weeds is to keep the land busy with a good crop on it, 

 and this means that the farmer must give persistent and connected thought 

 to his business. If the daisies crowd out the grass, it is because the 

 meadow has been neglected and the grass has begun to fail, and wherever 

 there is a vacancj" by the failure of the grass every entei*prising weed finds 

 a rightful opportunity to establish itself. If the farmer asks, therefore, 

 what will kill the daisies, there is one answer; better farming. Weeds find 

 nourishment and a home wherever there is waste ground, which means 

 ground not properly occupied. Widespread areas of daisies, buttercups, 

 wild carrots, mustards and the like are, therefore, the types and measures 

 of the prevailing ignorance of farmers respecting the very fundamental 

 principles of their calling. The one good thing that weeds can accomplish 

 is to prove by their presence that there is a weak point in the established 



