1!)S WEEDS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 
times national prejudices are pointedly expressed in the popular names 
given to newly imported weeds. Thus the North American Indian 
names Plantago major, the " Footsteps of the White Man;" and the 
German, the troublesome Peruvian Galinsocja parviflora, "French- 
man's Weed," though the French are probably quite innocent of its 
having become a pest in the sandy districts of Prussia and adjacent 
States. 
Have the plants we designate " weeds " always been weeds ? is a 
question to be answered. If the definition of the term given, and the 
views taken of the nature of these plants be correct, they cannot have 
been weeds in their native country ; and the deportment of weeds on 
being translated from one part of the world to another would seem to 
bear out this view. There are no complaints against our Water-cress 
becoming an impediment to our rivers and rivulets. Though assisted 
by cultivation, it is by no means a common or troublesome weed. But 
look at it in New Zealand, where it threatens to choke up altogether 
the still rivers, and where its stem often attains 12 feet in length, and 
£ of an inch in diameter. Galinsoga parviflora is very local in Peru; 
but mark its extraordinary increase in Europe since it effected its 
escape from our botanic gardens ! 
But if weeds have to surmount the obstacles which new-comers in 
all countries have to face, they also benefit by the advantages derived 
from their organization coming for the first time in contact with a soil 
to them altogether virgin. This contact acts so powerfully that, pro- 
vided the climate and other conditions required for the existence of a 
species are fulfilled, the new-comers will invariably become the victors 
in the great struggle for existence which immediately commences 
between them and the natives. This law seems to apply to the whole 
of organized nature, and man's own history furnishes some of the mos 
striking proofs of its catholicity. The light-skinned Polynesian, though 
a dying-out race in the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand since the 
arrival of new-comers of Teutonic origin, has nevertheless managed o 
establish his ascendancy over the indigenous dark-skinned Papuan w 
many parts of the Fijis. New-comers, always provided they gain a 
firm footing, have ever the advantage over those species or races es a- 
Wished in the country before their arrival. This is- well-known to 
farmers and gardeners, and induces them to procure from distant pan 
• stock and seeds of kinds identical with those already in their pps** 
