55 



SOME SILENT INVADERS OF OUR FIELDS. 

 Bro. M. Victorin, of the Christian Schools, Longueuil College, P.Q. 



It must be acknowledged that, in a general way, the average farmer 

 looks rather disdainfully on the entomologist and the botanist. Both of 

 these are, in his mind, dirty and queer-looking gentlemen, disrespectful 

 of fences and oatfields, bound on the ridiculous task of picking weeds and 

 catching bugs. 



Truth and justice are very far from this realistic conception, and in 

 the name of the ill-used tribe which I have the honor to represent in this 

 meeting, I will lay a dignified protestation. The field botanist — and the 

 entomologist as well — patrolling, shine or rain, on the edge of our fields, is 

 the advanced guard of agriculture. 



As a matter of fact, numberless hardy and well-armed plants, endowed 

 with powerful means of adaptation to every kind of soil or climate, silently 

 make their way to the St. Lawrence Valley. Geologists make much about 

 the state of equilibrium to which the earth's crust is settling through the 

 permanent weathering processes. There is something similar at work 

 with the vegetation of the globe. The actual distribution of plants is a 

 resultant of various ecological factors, such as climate, soil constituents, 

 physiographical features, etc., whose action is nevertheless hindered by 

 the limitations of the plant itself. 



On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the action of man over 

 nature has to a large extent modified the ecological equilibrium corre- 

 sponding to the actual geological phase. And as this human factor is 

 gradually increasing its stress, we must expect that the distribution of 

 plants will continue to vary until each species will have reached every habitat 

 where it can compete with success with the already established flora. 

 Botanically, a weed is, therefore, nothing else than a plant, which, through 

 the agency of man, has found a new and excellent mode of dispersal, thus 

 gaining a foothold which it has been able to retain through special qualities 

 of easy multiplication or great resistance. 



The St. Lawrence Valley, primitively clothed with the dense north- 

 eastern forest, and now opened gradually to agriculture and industry, 

 would present a most interesting problem in this respect: i.e., to figure the 

 flora of the country as Champlain, Hebert and Sarrasin saw it. This, we 

 intend to attempt some day or other. 



