A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



mainly in woods, and is much less showy 

 than ours. 



Our milkweed is tenacious of life ; its 

 roots lie deep, as if to get away from the 

 plow, but it seldom infests cultivated crops. 

 Then its stalk is so full of milk and its pod 

 so full of silk that one cannot but ascribe 

 good intentions to it, if it does sometimes 

 overrun the meadow. 



" In dusty pods the milkweed 

 Its hidden silk has spun," 



sings "H. H." in her " September." 



Of our ragweed not much can be set down 

 that is complimentary, except that its name 

 in the botany is Ambrosia, food of the gods. 

 It must be the food of the gods if anything, 

 for, so far as I have observed, nothing ter- 

 ^ restrial eats it, not even billy-goats. (Yet 



a correspondent writes me that in Kentucky 

 the cattle eat it when hard-pressed, and 

 that a certain old farmer there, one season 

 when the hay crop failed, cut and harvested 

 tons of it for his stock in winter. It is said 

 that the milk and butter made from such 

 hay is not at all suggestive of the traditional 

 Ambrosia!) It is the bane of asthmatic 

 patients, but the gardener makes short 

 work of it. It is about the only one of our 



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