1758.] IN PENNSYLVANIA. 385 



and is very wholesome early pasture for thorn ; yet our people 

 generally hate it, because it makes the milk, butter, cheese, and 

 indeed the flesh of those cattle that feed much upon it, taste so 

 strong, that we can hardly eat of it ; but for horses and young 

 cattle, it doth very well. But our millers can't abide it amongst 

 corn. It clogs up their mills so, that it is impossible to make 

 good flour. 



Docks are very troublesome in our mowing ground ; and, with- 

 out care, they spread much by seed. They stifle the grass by their 

 luxuriant broad leaves. 



The Scotch Thistle \_Cirsium horridulum ?~\ is a very trouble- 

 some weed, along our sea-coast. The people say, a Scotch minister 

 brought with him a bed stuffed with thistledown, in which was 

 contained some seed. The inhabitants, having plenty of feathers, 

 soon turned out the down, and filled the bed with feathers. The 

 seed coming up, filled that part of the country with Thistles. 



The foregoing are most of the English plants that have escaped 

 out of our gardens, and taken possession of our fields and meadows, 

 very much to our detriment. 



I now make a few observations on some of our native plants, 

 that are very troublesome, in our fields and meadows, and are with 

 difficulty eradicated. 



We have four kinds of the Bubus, beside our common black 

 Raspberry. The great upright Bramble grows near an inch in 

 diameter, and eight feet high, in good ground, though commonly 

 about two-thirds of that magnitude. This grows in our old fields 

 and hedges, bears berries plentifully, and spreads much under 

 ground, sending up abundance of shoots at uncertain distances. 



Another kind is much like the former, but more weak and lean- 

 ing, bears plentifully, and spreads as the other. Any piece of the 

 root left in the ground, though a foot deep, will soon send up a 

 shoot. 



Another kind, we call the Running Briar [Bubus Canadensis, 

 L., or Dewberry], and is the most troublesome kind. It roots very 

 deep ; and if we grub them up half a foot deep, they will shoot, 

 from the remaining root in the grounds several branches, which 

 will run on the surface two, three, or four yards in one summer, and 

 dip into the ground, where they take firm root, from whence they 

 will run, and take root as before ; whereby they soon spread over 

 much ground, and neither the plough nor mattock can easily 



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