262 ESSA YS. 



rope, the seeds of which came iu seed-grain, in the coats and 

 fleece and in the imported fodder of cattle and sheep, and in 

 the various but not always apparent ways in which agricul- 

 tural and commercial people unwittingly convey the plants 

 and animals of one country to another. So, while an agricul- 

 tural people displaced the aborigines which the forests shel- 

 tered and nourished, the herbs, purposely or accidentally 

 brought with them, took possession of the clearings, and pre- 

 vailed more or less over the native and rightful heirs to the 

 soil, — not enough to supplant them, indeed, but enough to 

 impart a certain adventitious Old World aspect to the fields 

 and other open grounds, as well as to the precincts of habita- 

 tions. In spring-time you would have seen the fields of this 

 district yellow with European Buttercups and Dandelions, 

 then whitened with the Ox-eye Daisy, and at midsummer 

 brightened by the cerulean blue of Chicory. I can hardly 

 name any native herbs which in the fields and at the season 

 can vie with these intruders in floral show. The common 

 Barberry of the Old World is an early denizen of New Eng- 

 land. The tall Mullein, of a wholly alien race, shoots up in 

 every pasture and new clearing, accompanied by the common 

 Thistle, while another imported Thistle, called in the United 

 States " the Canada Thistle," has become a veritable nui- 

 sance, at which much legislation has been leveled in vain. 



According to tradition the wayside Plantain was called by 

 the American Indian "White-Man's foot," from its springing 

 up wherever that foot had been planted. But there is some 

 reason for suspecting that the Indian's ancestors brought it to 

 this continent. Moreover there is another reason for surmis- 

 ing that this long-accepted tradition is fictitious. For there 

 was already in the country a native Plantain, so like Plantago 

 major that the botanists have only of late distinguished it. (I 

 acknowledge my share in the oversight.) Possibly, although 

 the botanists were at fault, the aborigines may have known 

 the difference. The cows are said to know it. For a brother 

 botanist of long experience tells me that, where the two grow 

 together, cows freely feed upon the undoubtedly native species, 

 and leave the naturalized one untouched. 



