248 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



expresses it well when he says that in " civilized, cul- 

 tivated, and inhabited New England, and as far inland 

 at least as the Mississippi, the prevailing vegetation 

 is the vegetation of central Europe, and that at its 

 weediest. The daisy, the primrose, the cowslip and 

 the daffodil have stayed at home ; the weeds have 

 gone to colonize the New World. For thistles and 

 burdock, dog-fennel and dead-nettle, hound's-tongue 

 and stick-seed, catnip and dandelion, ox-eye daisy 

 and cocklebur, America easily licks all creation. All 

 the dusty, noisome, and malodorous pests of all the 

 world seem there to revel in one grand, congenial, 

 democratic orgy." 



Of the plants described in Gray's " Manual of Bot- 

 any," as growing east of the Mississippi and north of 

 North Carolina and Tennessee, 293 are introduced 

 species, 27 of which are natives of tropical America, 

 the remaining 266 having found their way here from 

 Europe ; while 342 other species are common to the 

 north-eastern United States and Europe. Thus an 

 American botanist crossing the Atlantic could find, 

 growing indigenously in Europe, no less than 608 

 species of plants which he was accustomed to see at 

 home and they among the most common ones found 

 here. 



An interesting history of the numerous ways in 

 which the Old World weeds have been introduced into 

 this country could, no doubt, be written if one had all 

 the facts. One instance of how a single species found 

 its way from Germany to this State will serve as a 

 type of the method of introduction. While a student 

 at Indiana University, I w r as engaged for a time in 



