78 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



tiful than formerly. Its local name was " Poverty 

 weed," with reference, no doubt, not only to the way 

 in which it impoverished the soil, but also to the fact 

 that the seeds, becoming mixed with the corn, ren- 

 dered the latter of small value in the market. It is 

 a curious fact that abundant as the weed is on the 

 farms it has invaded, it does not appear to have made 

 fresh conquests of late years. Indeed, its area was 

 almost exactly the same in 1901 as it was in 1838, 

 when Dr. Bromfield visited the locality. 



In the British Flora there are some twenty to thirty 

 plants which bear the specific name of arvensis, a 

 word derived from the Latin arvum, which denotes 

 a ploughed field. Of these weeds so specially asso- 

 ciated with agriculture the greatest pests are the thistle 

 and the charlock. Hooker speaks of the former as 

 "the commonest pest of agriculture," and in some 

 districts it is extraordinarily abundant. But it is 

 not perhaps so generally troublesome as the charlock. 

 This yellow-flowered, cruciferous plant, sometimes and 

 rightly called " wild mustard," and known in Scotland 

 as "skellocks," is truly "an odious weed in tillage land." 

 The direct mischief caused by it is not only that it 

 overshadows the young growing corn, but, in a dry 

 season especially, it sucks up the moisture and good- 

 ness of the soil which should have gone to nourish 

 the wheat crop. Indirectly, too, it does harm by 

 encouraging; the turnip "fly" or flea-beetle, and by 

 harbouring the slime fungus which specially attacks 

 cruciferous crops. Of late years an attempt has 

 been made by spraying the young plants with a 

 solution of sulphate of copper to destroy this pest in 

 its early state, and the experiment is regarded by 

 many scientific agriculturists with favour. Among 



