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when the occasion offers. This gentleman informed me that a few 

 years ago he had a thistly pasture in the neighbourhood of Kidder- 

 minster, where patches of the Carduus nutans grew, an inheritance 

 derived from a former possessor of the soil. As they appeared to 

 maintain their position rather obstinately, he determined to get rid of 

 the thistles by ploughing up the ground, and trenching it to the depth 

 of two feet- This was accomplished, and a rustic of the vicinity, who 

 was witnessing the operation, and knew the field, shrewdly remarked 

 to my friend, " Yow'll get rid of them there thistles that grow'd every 

 year, at any rate." My friend said that he thought that he really 

 should. But the next year, to his surprise, the thistles covered the 

 whole field in such prodigious numbers, that, to use his own expres- 

 sion, there was hardly room even to introduce a hand between their 

 serried ranks. But they were now attacked vigorously with the hoe 

 before seeding, cut up from end to end without mercy, and they re- 

 appeared no more. No doubt can exist in this case that the seeds of 

 the thistle had accumulated for years beneath the soil, till, taking 

 advantage of the broken-up ground, they had swarmed in this asto- 

 nishing way. 



The garden weeds of some places will really be plants indigenous 

 to the spot indicative of former growth there, an instance of which 

 presented itself to my notice last summer at Welcombe, near Strat- 

 ford-upon-Avon, where, in a garden recently formed on the site of a 

 demolished mansion there, I was surprised at the rank growth of 

 numerous plants of henbane [Hyoscyamus niger), taller and more 

 branched than I ever saw before ; and unmarked by the gardener, 

 these plants, loaded with ripe capsules, were scattering their seeds all 

 around, the spreading branches arching towards the earth. In a spot 

 close to classic Stratford one may be excused in quoting Shakspeare, 

 who, with an eye ever open to analogical pictures, had evidently 

 observed some such rank overgrowth as I have been alluding to. 



" The seeded pride 

 That hath to this maturity blown up 

 In rank Achilles, must or now be cvopp'd, 

 Or shedding, breed a nursery of like evil. 

 To over-bulk us all.'' 



I have not often seen the " poisonous henbane springing up among 

 sweet flowers," though Mrs. Barbauld in one of her hymns poetically 

 alludes to such a circumstance, as symbolical of ill-tempered fellows 

 maliciously spoiling the sweets of life ; but it is remarkable that in 

 another garden close to Stratford I observed the henbane as a weed, 



