EARLY WEEDS 



from a trellis. The planters then go home and take no 

 furtlijr notice of their vines until they return in the autumn 

 to gather the gourds '"* (E. Palmer). 



There is an interesting point about the cultivation of 

 those early savage peoples who built up for themselves un- 

 healthy but elaborate wooden dwellings in the Swiss lakes, in 

 order to escape wild beasts and human beings who were 

 even more dangerous and ferocious than they. 



Weeds occurred in those cornfields, cultivated by stone 

 implements, some 60,000 years ago. 



The seed of an Italian weed had been introduced with 

 their corn, and was discovered in Switzerland ! 



Weeds are an extremely interesting group. A proverb 

 about the hardiness and multiplication of weeds can be dis- 

 covered in almost every language. " 111 weeds grow apace,"*' 

 Unkraut verbessert nicht, and so on. They are very common. 

 In fact weeds, wayside, and freshwater plants, have by far the 

 widest distribution of all. There are twenty-five species 

 which can be found over at least half the entire land surface 

 of the earth, and more than a hundred occupy a third of it.^ 



Moreover, many of our common weeds existed in Britain 

 when the glaciers and ice melted away, and there were as yet 

 no people able to cultivate the ground. 



The Creeping Buttercup, Chickweed, Mint, Persicaria, 

 Dock, and Sheep's Sorrel had already colonized the country, 

 before the Great Ice Age came upon them, and at least four- 

 teen weeds were here when the first corn-raising savages 

 landed in Britain.^ 



At first sight it is difficult to understand where and how 

 they lived. One discovers a very few, however, if one 



^ Drude, Handbuch Pfiam&ngeographie, p. 107. 

 ^ Reid, Origin of the British Flora, 

 274 



