THE NEW EARTH 



soil best adapted to their predatory wants 

 must be considered, also, in order that the 

 farmer may be forearmed for their destruction 

 should they be reported on the way. Strange 

 migrations of weeds are noted. It appears that 

 they have stood most persistently in the way 

 of glaciers, refusing to yield until crushed, and 

 that as soon as the ice age passed and the 

 warm zone rose, they persistently made their 

 way back again to the place from which they 

 had been driven. So they will migrate when 

 cultivation has apparently exterminated them, 

 leaving the haunts of man for more hospitable, 

 wilder places. But once let man's vigilance 

 cease to be eternal, back again they troop, a 

 ragged, robbing horde, taking possession of 

 the earth and converting the beautiful fields 

 into wretched regions, fit only for the haunts 

 of the wild. 



The weed is the clearest type of the savage. 

 It may in time be tamed, it may become even 

 highly civilized by the introduction of gentler 

 blood into its veins, it may even be utilized to 

 give tone and strength to an overdone and 

 effeminate race of civilized plants, but it is 

 essentially and forever savage if left to itself. 



114 



