FINANCIAL LOSS DUE TO WEEDS 



WEEDS cause a direct money loss to the farmer and to the nation. 

 In the first place, the presence of weeds in such abundance as to 

 attract notice, reduces the selling value of the land. A prospective 

 purchaser who sees meadows thickly spangled with Daisies and 

 Buttercups or looks over fields golden-yellow with Mustard, red 

 with Sorrel, or white with the lace-like bloom of Wild Carrot, 

 mentally subtracts the cost of cleaning the soil of these pests when 

 estimating his offering price. And this is as it should be ; for before 

 a profitable crop could be obtained from such ground, much careful 

 thought and expensive labor must go to the subjugation of its 

 enemies ; and the cost should very properly be borne by the neglect- 

 ful husbandman who first allowed his land to be so abused. Rank 

 growth of weeds may indicate fertility of the soil, and often the 

 fitness of the ground for particular crops may be judged by the kinds 

 of weeds found growing thereon ; but, nevertheless, buyers are 

 prejudiced and would-be sellers must submit to the embarrassment 

 of debased values when land is infested to any considerable extent 

 by these pernicious plants. 



Weeds reduce the crop yield. It is this crop loss that is most con- 

 sidered when estimating the damage suffered from weeds. All 

 living plants must have a certain amount of space for the circulation 

 of air and moisture and to be open to the life-giving w T armth and 

 light of the sun. When crowded, even among themselves, they 

 cannot thrive ; and if this needed space is to any extent occupied 

 by weeds, the returns from the crop must be correspondingly less. 

 These obnoxious neighbors also steal from the soil a large share of 

 the food and drink belonging to the rightful tenants of the ground. 

 The robbery of soil moisture is one of the chief forms of injury. 

 Weeds are notoriously more resistant to drought, more rapid of 

 growth, more sturdy of habit, and more tenacious of life than the 

 cultivated plants that they "shade down" or "starve out." It 



