RAIN ON THE ROOT CROPS. 153 



flood of sunshine ; instead of which, constant rain is 

 turning the field into a fine crop of golden charlock ; 

 while as to the turnips, they bid fair soon to afford excel- 

 lent corer for wild duck, which could be most conven- 

 iently and satisfactorily shot, American fashion, from a 

 shallow punt along the furrows. In such weather as 

 this it is good to be a philosopher ; and one may at least 

 reflect with pleasure that crops which are spoiled for all 

 practical purposes are still quite good enough to philoso- 

 phize upon. 



Indeed, from the biological point of view, even the 

 rain is not without a certain mournful interest of its 

 own. Turnips differ very little in their origin from 

 charlock ; and there is nothing on earth that charlock 

 loves so much as a wet summer. But, then, charlock is 

 not anxious for fresh material to store up in its root-stock 

 for the flowering season, like the swedes and turnips. 

 The difference all lies in the fact that the weed is an 

 annual, while the plant from which we get our cultivated 

 roots has been practically converted under our hands into 

 a sort of irregular biennial. There' is a wonderfully close 

 similarity between almost all these cabbage-like plants 

 in the wild state, and they illustrate beautifully the nat- 

 ural limitations of man's selective agency in producing 

 artificial varieties. Charlock is a capital typical example 

 of the race ; for it is perhaps one of the simplest and 

 earliest forms now surviving, and the least differentiated 

 in any one special direction. It is not a true native, but 

 comes to us, like so many other weeds of cultivation, 

 from those Routh European lands through which most 

 of our fruits and cereals passed on their westward way 

 from Central Asia. 



Now, in charlock there is no natural quality which 

 makes it worth man's while to subject it to tillage or 



