146 SPRING. 



that are not wanted, often makes the labour of the 

 farmer vain ; for while he is occupied for the great part 

 of the summer in breaking the clods of his fallow, and 

 burning the roots of the creeping grasses that he has 

 accumulated, his dry and exposed surface, and his fires 

 together, bring winds from all points of the compass, 

 each loaded with the seeds of weeds from those fields 

 that he has neglected, and from the thistles, the rag- 

 weed, the dock, the marigold, and all the other host 

 of winged plagues that keep flowering and ripening all 

 the summer, and which are sown in myriads by every 

 wind that stirs. It is thus essential to see that the 

 whole of the cultivated land is clear, and if there be a 

 waste in the neighbourhood, that should be shut out by 

 a plantation. Against the summer weeds all trees are 

 equally good, and probably the deciduous ones are the 

 best; but if the winds of winter are also wished to be 

 guarded against, pine, or some other evergreen, is the best. 

 We have known instances where, before planting, a field 

 could not lie two summers in pasture, without the grass 

 almost wholly giving place to a thick sod of moss, 

 elastic under the foot, and beginning to form peat at 

 its lower extremities; and even the whole interval 

 between the roots of corn in the stubble field were 

 green with the rudiments of the same plants. As 

 soon, however, as a belt of trees had been planted 

 and had run to a sufficient height for intercepting the 

 germs from the moor and the marsh, the progress of 

 the mosses Was arrested; and though they and the 

 lichens, and all the other natives of the wilderness that 

 are unfavourable to the growth of more valuable plants, 

 were much accumulated in the exposed part of the 



