10 WILD FLO WEES. 



climate of this country ; but again it may be justly 

 replied that, as Cainden says, they were " told be- 

 fore " they sailed from sunny Italy that they should 

 suffer from severe cold, and accordingly they pro- 

 vided for an emergency which they were afterwards 

 fortunate enough to escape. The question is one, 

 which, of course, can never be satisfactorily settled, 

 neither is it of importance ; yet it should be remem- 

 bered that there exists a singular, yet constantly 

 acting, dispersional law, by which, as has been al- 

 ready hinted, certain plants seem spontaneously to 

 follow man from their native spots, to such distant 

 lands as he may make his home. Thus the thorn- 

 apple (Datura Stramonium) has tracked the 

 gypsies out of Asia into all parts of Europe. The 

 middle-age incursions of those wild hordes which 

 advanced from Asia into Central Europe, were 

 marked by the more permanent migration of the 

 Tartar kale (Crdmbe ta,rtdricd). The keenly ob- 

 servant North American Indian, terms our common 

 road-weed (Plantdgo major) " the footstep of the 

 white/' so distinctively does it mark his path in the 

 new world. I might adduce numberless instances 

 of a similar nature, but it is sufficient here to remark 

 that the plants most certainly following the Eu- 

 ropean, are the nettle and the goosefoot (Chenopo- 

 dium)* May we not therefore reasonably allow 

 that the nettle in question might possibly migrate 

 to Britain with the Romans, even though we reject 

 the traditional record of the motive for its intro- 

 duction ? 



* See Schleiden " The Plant." 



