A BUNCH OF HERBS. 225 



woody and rank and fibrous many varieties become, 

 lasting the whole season, and standing up stark and 

 stiff through the deep winter snows, desiccated, 

 preserved by our dry air ! Do nettles and thistles 

 bite so sharply in any other country ? Let the farmer 

 tell you how they bite of a dry midsummer day when 

 he encounters them in his wheat or oat harvest. 



Yet it is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, 

 like our vermin, are of Old World origin. They 

 hold up their heads and assert themselves here, and 

 take their fill of riot and license ; they are avenged 

 for their, long years of repression by the stern hand 

 of European agriculture. We have hardly a weed 

 we can call our own ; I recall but three that are at 

 all noxious or troublesome, namely, milkweed, rag- 

 weed, and golden -rod ; but who would miss the latter 

 from our fields and highways^? 



" Along the road-side, like the flowers of gold 

 That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, . 

 Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod," 



sings Whittier. In Europe our golden-rod is culti- 

 vated in the flower-gardens, as well it might be. The 

 native species is found mainly in woods, and is much 

 ess showy than ours. 



Our milkweed is tenacious of life ; its roots lie 

 deep, as if to get away from the plow, but it seldom 

 infests cultivated crops. Then its stalk is so full of 

 milk and its pod so full of silk that one cannot but 

 ascribe good intentions to it, if it does sometimes over- 

 run the meadow. 

 15 



