A BUNCH OF HERBS 195 



The old farmers say that wood-ashes will bring 

 in the white clover, and it will ; the germs are in 

 the soil wrapped in a profound slumber, but this 

 stimulus tickles them until they awake. Stramo- 

 nium has been known to start up on the site of an 

 old farm building, when it had not been seen in 

 that locality for thirty years. I have been told 

 that a farmer, somewhere in New England, in dig- 

 ging a well came at a great depth upon sand like 

 that of the seashore ; it was thrown out, and in due 

 time there sprang from it a marine plant. I have 

 never seen earth taken from so great a depth that 

 it would not before the end of the season be clothed 

 with a crop of weeds. Weeds are so full of expe- 

 dients, and the one engrossing purpose with them 

 is to multiply. The wild onion multiplies at both 

 ends, at the top by seed, and at the bottom by 

 offshoots. Toad-flax travels under ground and above 

 ground. Never allow a seed to ripen and yet it 

 will cover your field. Cut off the head of the wild 

 carrot, and in a week or two there are five heads in 

 room of this one ; cut off these and by fall there are 

 ten looking defiance at you from the same root. 

 Plant corn in August, and it will go forward with 

 its preparations as if it had the whole season before 

 it. Not so with the weeds ; they have learned 

 better. If amaranth, or abutilon, or burdock gets 

 a late start, it makes great haste to develop its seed ; 

 it foregoes its tall stalk and wide flaunting growth, 

 and turns all its energies into keeping up the suc- 

 cession of the species. Certain fields under the 



