XXXY1L 



SOME AMERICAN COLONISTS. 



THE commonest weed in this little English garden at 

 the present moment is a small creeping wood-sorrel, 

 with the characteristic shamrock leaf (for wood-sorrel, 

 not clover, is the true trefoil of St. Patrick and of Ire- 

 land), but bearing yellow blossoms instead of the pretty 

 lilac- veined petals of our own familiar spring species. 

 It is an interesting little plant in its own way ; for, con- 

 trary to all the natural traditions of emigration, it has 

 moved eastward, against the way of the sun, and has 

 come to us across the Atlantic from the broad central 

 plains of the American continent. There is something 

 strange in the notion of a weed from the New World 

 overrunning the fields of the Old, and living down the 

 native inhabitants of more anciently civilized Europe. 

 Of course, we all take it for granted that our own this- 

 tles, chickweeds, and groundsels ought rightfully to ac- 

 company British wheat and barley to every part of the 

 colonizable world ; indeed, the North American Indians 

 call our common English ribwort " white man's foot," 

 because they say it springs up naturally wherever the 

 heel of the pale faces has trodden the soil. Sir Joseph 

 Hooker found our weedy English shepherd's purse 

 itself -a colonist from Central Asia growing abundantly 

 over a solitary antarctic islet ; and traced it finally to a 

 single seed which must have clung accidentally to the 

 spade used to dig the grave of a sailor, around which the 

 intrusive little plant was observed to flourish in great lux- 



