A BUNCH OF HERBS 



are ten looking defiance at you from the same root. 

 Plant corn in August, and it will go forward with 

 its preparations as if it had the whole season before 

 it. Not so with the weeds; they have learned better. 

 If amaranth, or abutilon, or burdock gets a late 

 start, it makes great haste to develop its seed; it 

 foregoes its tall stalk and wide flaunting growth, 

 and turns all its energies into keeping up the suc- 

 cession of the species. Certain fields under the 

 plow are always infested with "blind nettles," 

 others with wild buckwheat, black bindweed, or 

 cockle. The seed lies dormant under the sward, the 

 warmth and the moisture affect it not until other 

 conditions are fulfilled. 



The way in which one plant thus keeps another 

 down is a great mystery. Germs lie there in the 

 soil and resist the stimulating effect of the sun and 

 the rains for years, and show no sign. Presently 

 something whispers to them, "Arise, your chance 

 has come; the coast is clear;" and they are up and 

 doing in a twinkling. 



Weeds are great travelers; they are, indeed, the 

 tramps of the vegetable world. They are going 

 east, west, north, south; they walk; they fly; they 

 swim ; they steal a ride ; they travel by rail, by 

 flood, by wind ; they go under ground, and they 

 go above, across lots, and by the highway. But, 

 like other tramps, they find it safest by the high- 

 way: in the fields they are intercepted and cut off; 

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