CHAPTER XV 

 A HANDFUL OF WEEDS 



" All the idle weeds that grow 

 In our sustaining corn." King Lear. 



OLD Noah Webster defines a " weed " as "a 

 useless and troublesome plant," i.e., a vegetable 

 vagabond, not only idle, but mischievous. How- 

 ever worthless a plant may be from a utilitarian 

 point of view, it is hence not a " weed " till it be- 

 comes so thoroughly at home in the land as to 

 harass the gardener and the farmer; so it is merely 

 a question of locality whether a plant is a weed or 

 not. It may be quite without honor in its own 

 country, where even beauty is no excuse for its 

 being, yet under alien skies it may find itself the 

 pet of the horticulturist. The little pink-tipped 

 English daisy, so tenderly reared in New England 

 gardens, is in its own country a troublesome lawn 

 weed, while our homely mullein, that vagabond 

 of the pastures, is or used to be cherished in 

 Irish greenhouses under the name of " American 



flannel-plant." I have even heard that there are 



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