A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 131 



travels from continent to continent. Wheat has thus left 

 its first home in Asia and travelled westward around the 

 world, whilst maize, and potatoes, have gone in the other 

 direction, from our land to the farthest east. And, unfor- 

 tunately, man had to take the bad with the good, and. 

 for his sins no doubt, weeds seem to follow him more 

 closely, and to adhere more tenaciously to his home, than 

 all other friends, so that scholars have succeeded in de- 

 termining the race of early settlers in many .a country 

 by studying the weeds that were found in the place of 

 their former habitations. 



But we need not go to far-off countries to see plants 

 wandering about in the world : our own gardens afford 

 us, though on a smaller scale, many an instance of the 

 travelling propensities of these very plants that are so 

 much pitied because they cannot move about and choose 

 their own home. Every casual observer even knows that 

 many bulbs, like those of crocus, tulips, or narcissus, rise 

 or sink by forming new bulbs above or below, until they 

 have reached the proper depth of soil which best suits 

 their constitution or perhaps their fancy. Some orchids 

 have a regular locomotion : the old root dies, the new 

 one forms invariably in one and the same direction, and 

 thus they proceed onwards year after year, though at a 

 very modest, stage-coach rate. Strawberries, on the con- 

 trary, put on seven-league boots, and often escape from 

 the rich man's garden to refresh the weary traveller by 

 the wayside. Raspberries, again, mine their way stealthily 

 under ground, by a subterranean, mole-like process ; blind, 

 but not unguided, for they are sure to turn up in the 



