262 ESSAYS. 
rope, the seeds of which came in seed-grain, in the coats and 
fleece and in the imported fodder of cattle and sheep, and in 
the various but not always apparent ways in which agricul- 
tural and commercial people unwittingly convey the plants 
and animals of one country to another. So, while an agricul- 
tural people displaced the aborigines which the forests shel- 
tered and nourished, the herbs, purposely or accidentally 
brought with them, took possession of the clearings, and pre- 
vailed more or less over the native and rightful heirs to the 
soil, — not enough to supplant them, indeed, but enough to 
impart a certain adventitious Old World aspect to the fields 
and other open grounds, as well as to the precincts of habita- 
tions. In spring-time you would have seen the fields of this 
district yellow with European Buttercups and Dandelions, 
then whitened with the Ox-eye Daisy, and at midsummer 
brightened by the cerulean blue of Chicory. I can hardly 
name any native herbs which in the fields and at the season 
can vie with these intruders in floral show. The common 
Barberry of the Old World is an early denizen of New Eng- 
land. The tall Mullein, of a wholly alien race, shoots up in 
every pasture and new clearing, accompanied by the common 
Thistle, while another imported Thistle, called in the United 
States “the Canada Thistle,’ has become a veritable nui- 
sance, at which much legislation has been leveled in vain. 
According to tradition the wayside Plantain was called by 
the American Indian “ White-Man’s foot,” from its springing 
up wherever that foot had been planted. But there is some 
reason for suspecting that the Indian’s ancestors brought it to 
this continent. Moreover there is another reason for surmis- 
ing that this long-accepted tradition is fictitious. For there 
was already in the country a native Plantain, so like P/antago 
major that the botanists have only of late distinguished it. (I 
acknowledge my share in the oversight.) Possibly, although 
the botanists were at fault, the aborigines may have known 
the difference. The cows are said to know it. For a brother 
botanist of long experience tells me that, where the two grow 
together, cows freely feed upon the undoubtedly native species, 
and leave the naturalized one untouched. 
