THE WEEDS OF THE EARTH 



And even if it come under the influence of 

 civilization it will break away on the slightest 

 provocation, and, if not held in check, will 

 rapidly go back to its old wild, wandering 

 ways. 



I have always had a strong admiration for 

 those powerful hordes who swept down across 

 the face of Europe in the early centuries of 

 the Christian era and threw themselves in all 

 their savage fury upon the civilization of the 

 great South. And one cannot but admire, in 

 a certain contradictory sense, the tremendous 

 power that nature has given to these vegeta- 

 tion savages as they sweep resistlessly across 

 the earth, unless checked, and held in check, 

 by the concerted efforts of succeeding civiliza- 

 tions. If but during this one generation of the 

 New Earth, in which man in the mass has 

 learned more about these enemies than he had 

 ever known before, there should have been a 

 universal abandonment of this concerted effort 

 to keep down the weeds of the globe, the 

 gaunt figure of Famine, arm in arm with 

 Disease, and both overshadowed by Death, 

 would today stalk unmolested across the 

 earth, and man would rapidly approach the 



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