28 A GARDEN DIARY 



whether the same mode of reasoning has ever 

 been held to apply to weeds. If so, I cannot 

 say that the plan appears to me to answer. At 

 least I can safely swear that I have never called 

 one of them by its proper botanical name in my 

 life, yet they rush in on us from all sides, and 

 persecute us none the less impishly. 



There is one particularly diabolical individual, 

 which has clearly marked this garden as its 

 prey, and marches continually to and fro of it 

 like a roaring lion. What its correct name is 

 I shall in all probability never know, though I 

 have carefully cross-examined several botanical 

 works on the subject. It has narrow fleshy 

 leaves ; a mass of roots, constructed of equal 

 parts of pin wire and gutta-percha ; the meanest 

 of pinky white flowers, and a smell like sour hay. 

 It is not the leaves, the flowers, the roots, or 

 even the smell, that I so much object to. It 

 is the capacity it possesses of flinging out off- 

 shoots of itself to incredible distances, which 

 offshoots no sooner touch ground than they begin 

 to weave a kind of ugly green net over every- 

 thing within reach, enmeshing it all into as dense 

 a mass of leaves and roots as is the parent plant. 



Although I am no nearer extirpating it than I 

 was before, since yesterday I have at least been 

 able to name it, a satisfaction which many a poor 

 Speaker must have been thankful for, especially 

 in an age grown too picked and tender to allow 



