PEPACTON 



but on the public road, every boy, every passing 

 herd of sheep or cows, gives them a lift. Hence 

 the incursion of a new weed is generally first no- 

 ticed along the highway or the railroad. In Orange 

 County I saw from the car window a field overrun 

 with what I took to be the branching white mullein. 

 Gray says it is found in Pennsylvania and at the 

 head of Oneida Lake. Doubtless it had come by 

 rail from one place or the other. Our botanist 

 says of the bladder campion, a species of pink, that 

 it has been naturalized around Boston ; but it is 

 now much farther west, and I know fields along the 

 Hudson overrun with it. Streams and water-courses 

 are the natural highway of the weeds. Some years 

 ago, and by some means or other, the viper's bu- 

 gloss, or blue-weed, which is said to be a trouble- 

 some weed in Virginia, effected a lodgment near 

 the head of the Esopus Creek, a tributary of the 

 Hudson. From this point it has made its way down 

 the stream, overrunning its banks and invading 

 meadows and cultivated fields, and proving a seri- 

 ous obstacle to the farmer. All the gravelly, sandy 

 margins and islands of the Esopus, sometimes acres 

 in extent, are in June and July blue with it, and 

 rye and oats and grass in the near fields find it a 

 serious competitor for possession of the soil. It 

 has gone down the Hudson, and is appearing in 

 the fields along its shores. The tides carry it up 

 the mouths of the streams where it takes root ; the 

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