A BUNCH OF HERBS. 221 



fields they are intercepted and cut off ; but on the 

 public road, every boy, every passing herd of sheep 

 or cows, gives them a lift. Hence the incursion of a 

 new weed is generally first noticed along the high- 

 way or the railroad. In Orange County I saw from 

 the car window a field overrun with what I took to 

 be the branching white mullein ( V. lychnitis). Gray 

 says it is found in Pennsylvania and at the head of 

 Oueida Lake. Doubtless it had come by rail from 

 one place or the other. Our botanist says of the 

 bladder campion (Silene inflatd), a species of pink, 

 that it has been naturalized around Boston ; but it is 

 now much farther west, and I know fields along the 

 Hudson overrun with it. Streams and water-courses 

 are the natural highway of the weeds. Some years 

 ago, and by some means or other, the viper bugloss, 

 or blue weed (Echium), which is said to be a trouble- 

 some weed in Virginia, effected a lodgment near the 

 head of the Esopus Creek, a tributary of the Hudson. 

 From this point it has made its way down the stream, 

 overrunning its banks and invading meadows and cul- 

 tivated fields, and proving a serious obstacle to the 

 farmer. All the gravelly, sandy margins and islands 

 of the Esopus, sometimes acres in extent, are in June 

 ind July blue with it, and rye and oats and grass in 

 the near fields find it a serious competitor for posses- 

 sion of the soil. It has gone down the Hudson, and 

 s appearing in the fields along its shores. The tides 

 carry it up the mouths of the streams where it takes 

 root; the winds, or the birds, or other agencies, in 



