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ONTARIO DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, TORONTO. 



SOME COMMON ONTARIO WEEDS 



BY 

 PROF. F. C. HARRISON, B.S.A., ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 





a. Flower of Perennial Sow Thistle (Sonchus arvensis). 

 6. Flower of Annual Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus). 



A leading educational authority lately said he did not believe that 

 one farmer in a dozen could give the generally accepted common names 

 of twenty of our common weeds. Whether this is so or not, one thing is 

 certain, viz., that noxious weeds are spreading very rapidly in the Pro- 

 vince of Ontario, and farmers need all the information they can get to 

 assist them in preventing further loss from this very serious 'hindrance 

 to successful agriculture. Hence the preparation of this bulletin for the 

 Committee on Economic Botany appointed by the Experimental Union, 

 in connection with the Ontario Agricultural College. 



Now that agriculture is to be taught in the public schools, it is to 

 be hoped that teachers will collect and press specimens of the worst 

 weeds, and that the illustrations and descriptions herein submitted may 

 be of some use to them in their work. A second series will appear before 

 long, if the demand for this bulletin warrants the publication of further 

 information along this line. 



The writer wishes to express his thanks for the assistance rendered 

 by Wm. McCallum, B.S.A., who has labored unremittingly in collecting 

 ^plants and seeds and in arranging material ; and to Norman Ross, B.S. A., 

 for his exact and artistic pen-drawings of the plants and seeds found in 

 !the bulletin. Mr. Ross made the drawings from specimens collected in 

 jthis vicinity and photographs taken in the laboratory. 



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