THE PINK FAMILY 61 



waste places throughout Canada. Sometimes sown as feed for 

 sheep or as a binder of soil on sandy land. 



Injury: Troublesome on sandy soils in the eastern prov- 

 inces and the Pacific coast. Common in grain and clover fields. 

 The seed is a frequent impurity in grass and clover seeds and ce- 

 real grains grown on lands infested with it. Spurrey is cultivated 

 as a forage crop on some of the light, sandy soils of European 

 countries. When sown in the fall it produces a large yield of 

 fodder for spring feeding. It is said to be a nutritious food and 

 liked by cattle and sheep when once they have become accus- 

 tomed to it. 



Remedy : The seeds are produced in abundance and mature 

 early. An application of the weeder or harrow destroys seedling 

 plants in the spring grain. Spurrey will not give serious trouble 

 on lands worked under a systematic crop rotation. Shallow 

 cultivation of stubble lands will start germination and the young 

 plants can be easily destroyed in cultivating for spring 

 seeding. 



Some the hoe prefer, 



Which female hands, or, if of lighter make, 

 The childish grasp can wield; even his small hands, 

 Of years so simple, that he grieves to hurt 

 The pretty flowers, which, strung about his neck, 

 He wears with more delight than kings their crowns. 

 Thus too, the crop itself (soon as the plants 

 Four leaves spread fully forth) is duly thinned. 



James Grahame, British Georgics, 1812. 



We ought to learn more about each plant than we do, the time of its appearance 

 and flowering, what it does with itself in the winter, whether dropping its leaves .... or 

 disappearing beneath the ground like Snowdrop or Hyacinth, or facing the cold with 

 a tuft of leaves lying close upon the earth like a Foxglove. What sort of locality does 

 it love field, marsh, rock? How does it treat other plants when it encounters them? 

 Does it twine round them like a Convolvulus, creep over them like many trailing plants, 

 or bear itself erect like a Buttercup? How does it wither? Shabbily and untidy like 

 the Pansy, or in the neat, decorous mode of the Gentianella? These and all other facts 

 which we can learn about a plant have a value in an imaginative point of view; they 

 tell us something about it, and so enable us to understand it, to read its true meaning 

 and character. 



Forbes Watson, Flowers and Garden, 1730. 



