66 FOREIGN PLANTS, HOW INTEODUCED. 



thousand accidents whicli befall the emigrant in his journey 

 across the Western plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds 

 he designed for his garden, and the herbs which fill so important 

 a place in the rustic materia medica of the Eastern States, spring 

 up along the prairie paths but just opened by the caravan of the 

 settler. * 



" A negro slave of the great Cortez," says Humboldt, " was the 

 first who sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of 

 it among the rice which had been brought from Spain as food 

 for the soldiers." 



About twenty years ago, a Japanese forage plant, the Lesjpe- 

 deza striata^ whose seeds had been brought to the United States 

 by some unknown accident, made its appearance in one of the 

 Southern States. It spread spontaneously in various directions, 

 and in a few yearg was widely diffused. It grows upon poor and 

 exhausted soils, where the formation of a turf or sward by the 

 ordinary grasses would be impossible, and where consequently no 

 regular pastm'es or meadows can exist. It makes excellent fodder 

 for stock, and though its value is contested, it is nevertheless 

 generally thought a very important addition to the agricultm^al 

 resources of the South, f 



* Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first 

 British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had ob- 

 served more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near their 

 improvements. 



Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and 

 therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his 

 dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural habitation 

 after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation stones of 

 which have been carried off, may often be recognized, years afterwards, by the 

 rank weeds which cover it, though no others of the same species are found 

 for miles. 



" Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, " brought us the red horsehoof — 

 whose reddish-brown flower-buds shoot up from the ground when the snow 

 melts, and are followed by the large leaves — comfrey and snake-root — which 

 grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the JMiddle 

 Ages." — Bogens Indvandring i de DansTce Shove, pp. 1, 2. 



•f- Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of foreign 

 vegetables ia countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a dio?cious 

 tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the countries into 

 which it has been introduced, the cuttings have been taken from the male, 

 and as, consequently, males only have grown from them, the poplar does not 



