FLOWERS AND WEEDS INTRODUCED. 9 



common in England ; 2d, Such plants as are proper to the country ; 

 3d, Such plants as are proper to the country and have no names ; 

 4th, Such plants as have sprung up since the English planted 

 and kept cattle in New England ; and, 5th, Such garden herbs 

 amongst us as do thrive there and such as do not. 



Among those of the second class which attracted his attention 

 were earth-nuts, one sort bearing most beautiful flowers l of which 

 Winslow records that the Pilgrims during their first winter "were 

 enforced to live on ground-nuts," 2 and also interesting to modern 

 horticulturists from the propositions which have been made, look- 

 ing to its improvement so as to make it a valuable esculent root. 8 

 But this plant has lost its opportunity ; and what value lies unde- 

 veloped in it we shall probably never know, unless the potato 

 becomes far worse diseased than at present. In his third division 

 he gives 4 a woodcut of a leaf of the Goodyera pubescens, or rattle- 

 snake plantain, as unmistakable as the colored plate in the Flore 

 des Serres, and regrets that he failed of carrying this plant, which 

 he "judged to be a kind of pirola and a very beautiful plant," 

 and which has become so much sought after in our day for fern- 

 cases, etc., to England as a rarity of great value. His fourth 

 class is both curious and interesting, if we can depend upon the 

 accuracy of the names, as showing how rapidly foreign weeds were 

 usurping the places of native plants. He mentions the couch-grass, 

 shepherd' s-purse, dandelion, groundsel, nettle, plantain, knot- 

 grass, " cheek- weed " 5 and several others besides the pur slain, 

 which we find among his garden herbs. All the common garden 

 herbs and vegetables, with few exceptions, were found to grow 

 well ; and among flowers he mentions hollyhocks, gillyflowers, 

 sweet-brier or eglantine, and English roses ; which last, he says, 

 thrive " very pleasantly." 6 This appears to be, with the excep- 

 tion of Window's "fair white lily and sweet fragrant rose " among 

 other flowers in his rough rhymes, the first intimation we have of 

 the cultivation of garden flowers ; a neglect which we ascribe rather 

 to the necessity of first attending to the growth of such plants as 

 afforded subsistence than to lack of taste. 



Some of our most injurious insects were very early noticed. 

 Josselyn says, "there is a Bug that lyes in the earth and eateth the 



1 N. E. Rarities, p. 56. * N. E. Rarities, p. 67. 



2 Young's Chronicles, p. 329. 8 Ibid., pp. 85, 86. 

 a Journal of the London Horticultural Society, Vol. H. p. 144. Ibid., pp. 87-91. 



