PEPACTON 



honey from all these plants, but Emerson is careful 

 to say only that she dwelt among them. Succory is 

 one of Virgil's weeds also, 



"And spreading succ'ry chokes the rising field." 



Is there not something in our soil and climate 

 exceptionally favorable to weeds, something 

 harsh, ungenial, sharp-toothed, that is akin to them ? 

 How woody and rank and fibrous many varieties 

 become, lasting the whole season, and standing up 

 stark and stiff through the deep winter snows, 

 desiccated, preserved by our dry air! Do nettles 

 and thistles bite so sharply in any other country? 

 Let the farmer tell you how they bite of a dry mid- 

 summer day when he encounters them in his wheat 

 or oat harvest. 



Yet it is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, 

 like our vermin, are of Old World origin. They hold 

 up their heads and assert themselves here, and take 

 their fill of riot and license ; they 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, rag- 

 weed, and goldenrod ; but who would miss the last 

 from our fields and highways ? 



"Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 

 That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 

 Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod," 

 220 



