PLANT ALIENS 149 



the Roman invasion. Tall Lombardy a mere sprig, a bud, would soon estab- 



poplars surrounding yonder mansion lish a colony. A scrap of floating 



can produce certificates for one and a wood carried it here ; there it slid down 



half centuries only ; the two planes, a drain-pipe or crept through a sluice 



oriental and occidental, for ever into a canal ; yonder a ditch-cleaner, 



shedding their flaky bark, are alike con- dragging his heavy boots across a field, 



victed; the black mulberry, the gloomy transported a spray to new waters, 



cedar, and the delicately-leaved acacia Farmers and boating men were com- 



cannot stand a moment's trial. The pelled to spend thousands of pounds 



last named, also called the robinia or in raking out the intruder from the 



locust-tree, was imported to England clogged watercourses. Vain the hope 



by William Cobbett, though known of extermination by such means ; the 



here before his time. Cobbett opened only solace is that the invader may 



a nursery for its propagation ; it was by chance exhaust the muddy soil 



to be the tree of the future, a prophecy which lends it support, and thus vanish 



sadly belied by later history. as secretly as it came. 



Passing the village our way lies for The canal must presently be left 

 some distance alongside a canal, whose behind, that we may follow the wind- 

 sluggish waters are choked with a ings of a streamlet whose marshy fore- 

 matted growth of that troublesome lands are clothed with the bright yellow 

 pest, the anacharis, or American water- mimulus, known to townsfolk as the 

 thyme. Anacharis has limp, strag- monkey musk of the window box. 

 gling stems, belted, at short intervals, One could readily enumerate half a 

 with whorls of linear translucent leaves, score of localities where this not un- 

 About the year 1840, in an evil hour, welcome guest has settled, and the 

 some one appears to have brought list might be doubled. The mimulus 

 specimens of the plant to Britain, extends itself with remarkable per- 

 Soon a cry arose, the alien was spread- tinacity ; four roots brought by the 

 ing from pond to pond, from artificial writer from the margin of the Bucking- 

 lakelet to stream, river, and canal. Its hamshire Chess now completely border 

 rank abundance actually deluded one a good-sized garden. A bridge is next 

 authority into the belief that it was reached, crossing which, a footpath 

 indigenous. Apart from propagation leads through a clover field. An alien 

 by fruit, the plant spread vegetatively ; vetch or trefoil may be catalogued. 



