Tlie Country Gcntkinaiis Alagazinc 



471 



A RAMBLE THROUGH ROXBURGH AND SELKIRK. 



ON the loth September we commenced a five 

 days' ramble through portions of Rox- 

 burgh and Selkirk-shires, by inspecting the vege- 

 tation about some of the waste places and rub- 

 bish-heaps at Galashiels, where much of the 

 refuse matter is deposited, which is found in 

 the wool that is imported for supplying the 

 extensive manufactories of Tweeds and other 

 woollen stuffs, in that thriving and rapidly- 

 rising border burgh. This refuse is extracted 

 from the wool by means of very ingeniously 

 constructed costly machinery, and is largely 

 composed of the seed vessels and seeds of exotic 

 pasture plants and weeds, which, by their ad- 

 hesive incorporation with the wool, often detract 

 as much as thirty per cent, from its value. 

 Paramount among these deteriorating seed 

 vessels are the "burs,"' or spirally-twisted 

 pods of the spiny-podded section of the 

 extensive genus Medicago, which, in its 

 more harmless sections, include the cultivated 

 lucerne, M. sativa, and the common yellow clover, 

 M. lupulina. These spiny-podded medicks 

 are represented in our annual flower borders by 

 the hedgehog plant, M. intertexta, less cultivated 

 now, however, than formerly ; and belonging to 

 their section. George Don has described in 

 his " Gardeners' Dictionary" about tifty species, 

 besides varieties, of which three or four are na- 

 tives of Britain, being found somewhat rarely in 

 sandy and gravelly pastures, and chiefly near the 

 sea, in the southern English counties. Many 

 grow naturally throughout southern Europe and 

 northern Africa. They enter largely into the 

 herbage of the pastoral districts of extra-tropical 

 South America, and their burs are too prevalent 

 in wools from the Cape, Australia, and New 

 Zealand, although none of the species are in- 

 cluded in Hookers "Flora" of the latter. It is 

 just possible that the importation of foul pasture 

 seeds, and carelessness or injudicious doings on 

 the part of cultivators, is allowing their introduc- 

 tion and spread there, as well as in other 

 climates favourable for their propagation ; and 

 this is the more likely to happen from their 

 yellow clover-like herbage being agreeable and 

 fattening foods for all kinds of live stock, while 

 most of the kinds are also possessed of consider- 

 able drought-resisting properties. In warm 

 climates their seeds rapidly vegetate, and the 

 plants speedily develop into an exuberant growth 



on the occurrence of rain, after pasture-effacing 

 tracts of dry weather. Some have expressed 

 fears lest the importation of these medick burs 

 in the wool may lead to the troublesome presence 

 of at least the earlier maturing kinds in British 

 pastures ; and we have been amused at hearing 

 woollen manufacturers blaming farmers for using 

 manures or compost in which they may have 

 been mixed, as if their destruction by burning in 

 engine furnaces or otherwisewas not moreespeci- 

 ally under factory than farm control. We have, 

 however, no great fears on this score, as it is only 

 in warm seasons that even the earliest kinds per- 

 fect their first formed seeds with us ; and the 

 plants are not naturally adapted for contending 

 with the thick grassy swards of our pasture lands. 

 In confirmation of this, we may mention that 

 plants of several of these medicks, which grew 

 in the average-temperatured season of last year, 

 in a very favourable exposure, at Glenmayne, 

 near Galashiels, and some of which spread over 

 widths of 2 to 3 feet, produced scarcely any ripened 

 seeds, although their stems were thickly covered 

 with green bur pods. And nowhere in the 

 vicinity of the mill-waste heaps could we dis- 

 cover any plants among the pastures. About 

 1 840, some potato fields, in the vicinity of Ken- 

 dal, which had been manured with wool clean- 

 ings, were so thickly covered with various 

 medicks, of which we then received specimens 

 for naming, that the potato plants were in some 

 places almost concealed by them ; and the growers 

 became not a little alarmed at the importation 

 of these new and seemingly formidable weeds, 

 which were, however, easily got under, and have 

 caused little or no further trouble. In the waste 

 deposit near the Messrs Cochrane's mill, at 

 Netherdale, we found seven species of those 

 spiny-podded medicks, among which were 

 Medicago muricata, M. maculata, M. murex, 

 M. minima, and M. laciniata. There were also 

 a number of grasses, not natives of the district, 

 among which a perennial meadow grass bore 

 otherwise a considerable resemblance to the 

 very common annual one, Poa annua ; Poly- 

 pogon monspeliensis, and another species ; a 

 broad-leaved upright growing, and a dwarf- 

 spreading finger grass ; a very strong growing 

 broad-foliaged grass, not in flower; two or 

 three annual species of Agrostis, a barley- 

 o-rass, &:c.— some of which were too muck 



