194 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [10:5— May, 1914 



At the sight of the plant, some of the children looked expectant; 

 it was a signal for Mary Hogan to begin to whisper loudly and 

 scrape her feet. Weary with scolding the girl, Miss Lacy deter- 

 mined to pay no attention. She kept her eyes on the face of 

 Benny Ford, a delicate boy who seemed interested, and somehow, 

 she gained courage to go on with the lesson. 



"Can any one tell where Curled Dock grows?" 



"In the vacant lot," a chorus of voices cried. Half the children 

 rose in their seats to see if they cotild see a Ciirled Dock from the 

 window. 



"It grows ever5rwhere around here. Everybody calls it a weed, 

 it is so common," Joe remarked with an air of great wisdom. 



"Where did Curled Dock come from in the beginning?" Leslie 

 Gordon asked. 



"From Europe." 



"Weren't there any Curled Docks when Columbus came over 

 to America?" Mamie Dolan asked, her eyes big with interest. 



"No," Miss Lacy smilingly replied. 



"It's no good, why did they allow it to come over here?" My 

 father says that they are very particular about what people they 

 let come over now." 



"They should be and they are more particular about the plants 

 than they used to be, Joe." "You see," she continued, "the 

 people in Europe did not like Curled Dock and would not give 

 it room to grow, because they needed all the land to raise food for 

 the people. Labor is cheap in Europe, so Curled Dock had a 

 hard time. Only the strongest plants succeeded in growing and 

 bearing seeds. One day the seeds from one of the successful 

 plants got mixed with some other seeds that were being sent to 

 America, and that was how Curled Dock came across the ocean. 

 In America there is a great deal of land which is not cultivated 

 so Curled Dock had a good chance to grow and produce a great 

 many seeds. Soon there were so many of these plants that the 

 American people called them troublesome weeds, and tried to 

 get rid of them by cutting them down and digging them up by the 

 root. We have not been able to get rid of Curled Dock as easily 

 as they did in Eiu-ope and it has kept right on growing and travel- 

 ing across the country." 



"I know why they could get rid of Curled Dock better than we 

 could, Miss Lacy." 



