WEEDS. 249 



working up the flora of Monroe County, and one day 

 happened upon a strange species of the Composite, or 

 sunflower family of plants, growing in the new college 

 campus. It proved a puzzler, and after spending the 

 better part of my spare time for two days in endeavor- 

 ing to find its name, a specimen was sent to Professor 

 Dudley, the botanist at Cornell University, for identifi- 

 cation. He, having traveled in Europe, immediately 

 recognized it as a pernicious weed common on the 

 continent, but not before reported from any part of 

 the United States. The next question was, how had 

 it found its way into that remote corner of Indiana? 

 It was easily answered. A new supply of glassware 

 for the chemical department of the University had, 

 the fall before, been purchased in Germany, and the 

 straw in which it had been packed was thrown on the 

 ground and left 'for a day or two on the very spot 

 where the plant had afterwards appeared. The threa 

 specimens which sprang up were destroyed before 

 maturing their seeds and the spread of the weed 

 throughout the country was thereby prevented. 



But all the weeds introduced into this State in 

 recent years are not foreigners or descendants of for- 

 eigners. The supply of new species from Europe is 

 about exhausted, and the great plains of the west and 

 southwest, admirably adapted by nature for the evo- 

 lution of weeds of cultivation, are rapidly sending 

 eastward their own rich contingent to compete with 

 the trans- Atlantic types for the mastery of our soil. 

 Twenty years ago there started eastward from the 

 base of the Rocky Mountains, the bristly cone-flower 

 and the fetid marigold, two members of the great 



