A BUNCH OF HERBS 201 



are avenged for their long years of repression by 

 the stern hand of European agriculture. We have 

 hardly a weed we can call our own. I recall but 

 three that are at all noxious or troublesome, namely, 

 milkweed, ragweed, and goldenrod; but who would 

 miss the last from our fields and highways ? 



" Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 

 That taAvny Incas for their gardens wrought, 

 Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod," 



sings Whittier. In Europe our goldenrod is culti- 

 vated in the flower gardens, as well it may be. 

 The native species is found mainly in woods, and is 

 much less showy than ours. 



Our milkweed is tenacious of life; its roots lie 

 deep, as if to get away from the plow, but it seldom 

 infests cultivated crops. Then its stalk is so full 

 of milk and its pod so full of silk that one cannot 

 but ascribe good intentions to it, if it does some- 

 times overrun the meadow. 



" In dusty pods the milkweed 

 Its hidden silk has spun," 



sings "H. H." in her "September.'' 



Of our ragweed not much can be set down that 

 is complimentary, except that its name in the bot- 

 any is Ambrosia^ food of the gods. It must be 

 the food of the gods if anything, for, so far as I 

 have observed, nothing terrestrial eats it, not even 

 billy-goats. (Yet a correspondent writes me that 

 in Kentucky the cattle , eat it when hard-pressed, 

 and that a certain old farmer there, one season when 

 the hay crop failed, cut and harvested tons of it for 



