THE MUSEUM. 



23 



ful have been these schemes that the 

 weeds which put them finto practice 

 have travelled half around the globe. 

 Like an invading army they push fur- 

 ther on despite all the resistance of the 

 owners of the soil. 



Some weeds have timed themselves, 

 with wonderful accuracy, to the oper- 

 ations of the farmer. That bugbear 

 of English wheat-growers, the scarlet 

 poppy, has acquired the habit of ripen- 

 ing its seed-vessels at the precise time 

 when the wheat is ready for the sickle. 

 Then when wheat is reaped, the fields 

 are taken possession of by weeds which 

 regulate their affairs with such nicety 

 that they grow, blow, mature their 

 seed-vessels and scatter their seeds, all 

 between the in-gathering of the har- 

 vest and the coming of the frost. 



■'They blow," we say, for all weeds 

 bear flowers. Most sorts belong to 

 that immense and successful botanical 

 family, the Coitipositie, which produce 

 a very great number of very minute 

 flowers, often so grouped as to resem- 

 ble single larger flowers. To the un- 

 botanical public the most familiar com- 

 posite flower is the daisy. Its yellow 

 centre or disk is an assemblage of little 

 trumpet-shaped blossoms, set as close 

 together as possible. In a ring around 

 this disk we see what botanists call 

 the "ray flowers," and what non-bot- 

 anists call the "white leaves" of the 

 daisy. On closer examination, these 

 will be found to be tiny flowrets with 

 a pistil apiece, but with no stamens, 

 and with their white corollas split open 

 all down one side. So the daisy, 

 which looks like one flower, is really a 

 close mass of very tiny blossoms. The 

 chrysanthemum, that recent favorite 

 of fashion, is another composite flower, 

 and it counts among its poor relations 



a numerous company of weeds. The 

 cockle-bur, ragweed, snee2;eweed, bur- 

 dock and sow-thistle are all Covipos- 

 itiv. So are the groundsel, the dan- 

 delion, and the bur-marigold. So is 

 that enemy to the Western farmer and 

 darling of the patriotic Scot, the 

 thistle. 



About all these "dooryard weeds," 

 which have followed mankind for ages, 

 there has gathered a wealth of legend, 

 folk-lore, and literary association. 



Amaranth, "the flower of death, " 

 for instance, is almost as common as 

 death itself. It grows in waste places 

 near towns, and is a coarse weed; 

 topped with a feathery greenish or 

 purplish plume. Some species of 

 amaranth are cultivated in old-fash- 

 ioned gardens, and called "cock's- 

 comb," "love-lies-bleeding," and 

 "prince's-feather. " The gardener 

 knows and hates another variety under 

 the name of "pigweed." All varieties 

 bear blossoms no bigger around than a 

 hair, and these minute flowers grow in 

 compact clusters, each cluster sur- 

 rounded by a close circle of chaffy 

 leaves, very slow to wither. The fa- 

 miliar "immortelles" are on the same 

 botanical plan, and with their chaffy 

 leaves (a botanist would call them the 

 involucre) being pretty as well as dur- 

 able, have brought the little blossoms in- 

 to general favor. The unwithering ama- 

 ranth was looked upon by the ancients 

 as the flower of immortality. The 

 phrase in the First Epistle of St. 

 Petnr, "a crown of glory that fadeth 

 not away," is in the original, "the, 

 amaranthine crown of glory." The 

 purple flowers of the amaranth retain 

 their color always, and regain their 

 shape when wetted, and were used by 

 the ancients for winter chaplets. As 



