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are able to maintain themselves. The garden, of course, requires constant 
weeding. Practically all the weeds on the place are foreigners. 
I just referred to a neglected bit of land, to an idle plot of ground. 
This at first, eight years ago, was covered with Blue grass and grazed. 
The number of plants that have come in since is something remarkable. 
Equally remarkable is the absence of common weeds; they seem not to get 
“1 start in the dense covering of Blue grass. Barnlot weeds are never found 
in that patch, nor some of the common garden weeds. Among the plants 
to appear were a number of trees and shrubs. Unfortunately, three years 
ago, a cow got in and many of the plants were killed off, but the way the 
shrubby and woody plants spring up would indicate that in a short time 
there will be a forest and light-loving plants will be wholly crowded out. 
It is interesting to note how in the South, old exhausted cotton land 
when left to nature grows up in pine forests, Old Field Pine, but the wood 
bas so little substance that a tree, when cut, will wholly fade away in the 
course of a year. It certainly takes a long time for exhausted soil to regain 
its strength and for trees worth while to again get a foothold. 
Besides tramping along railways in search of new arrivals, I fre- 
quently take strolls about neglected parts of the city to see whether any new 
weeds have come in and what changes have taken place among those 
wlready present. One day last summer I started out from the heart of the 
city where there is no yegetation, no grass and no trees, because streets 
and sidewalks are everywhere paved. I went along one of the neglected 
streets which is either deep in dust or in mud. This street has practically 
no trees at all. Along the gutters were found growing a number of weeds, 
practically all foreign ones, that seem able to resist the dense clouds of 
dust that are deposited on them. The plants are white with dust, or 
rather grayish, almost resembling desert plants. I passed several waste 
lots covered with weeds, nearly all of European origin. I finally reached 
Shanty Town, where weeds flourish among the human habitations. The 
people themselves, like the weeds, were of the neglected kind. A little 
farther on I came to the railway shop, with its large roundhouse, where 
an immense amount of dense black smoke arises. Now, since our preyail- 
ing winds are from the southwest and west, the smoke, of course, blows off 
in the opposite direction. I was surprised to see that all the trees to the 
east in line with the smoke were dead, a number of dead trunks were still 
standing. When I first came here, fourteen years ago, there were a num- 
