A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



rives them a lift. Hence the mcursion of 

 a new weed is generally first noticed 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 branch- 

 ing 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 watercourses are the natural 

 highway of the weeds. Some years ago, 

 and by some means or other, the viper's 

 bugloss, or blueweed, which is said to be 

 a troublesome 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 serious 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 



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