58 GRAMIXIVOR.E. 



cultivated land, whenever it is neglected for even a short 

 time. 



Of the seeds of these plants there is a constant succes- 

 sion all the year through, for the wind has not shaken the 

 autumnal thistles bare by the time that the early groundsels 

 are in flower ; and to these the dandelion and many other 

 species are soon added. The numbers of those seeds are 

 beyond all counting; and the means with which they are 

 furnished for floating about with the lightest wind that stirs, 

 are most effective : they are, at the same time, fitted for 

 laying hold, and their oily nature renders them not easily 

 destructible by the weather. Hence they are everywhere ; 

 and one who examines the quantity of down that floats off 

 from a single bed in a neglected garden, must see that one 

 acre of cultivated land allowed to run to waste, would suffice 

 to infest a whole parish. It is a maxim in farming, that 

 where the hedges and lanes are foul, the fields never can be 

 clean ; and countless instances may be seen in England, and 

 in Middlesex not less than in more remote places, where the 

 farmer gives half of what his land might produce to the 

 weeds, just because he will not grub up some green lane or 

 inconvenient corner, but retains it as an ever-productive 

 nursery of the most destructive species. But though these 

 accumulations of unseemly plants spoil or diminish the har- 

 vest of the farmer, they yield an ample autumnal and winter 

 supply for the gold-finches ; and the margin of the wild is 

 often made gay with the colours and the song of the gold- 

 finch, simply because the farmer on the richer ground is 

 a sloven. 



When they disperse for the summer, the gold-finches do 

 not retire very far outward on the bleak moor, or far upward 

 on the hill, or into the forest. If the state of the land is 

 slovenly, they remain among the lower fields, in numbers 

 proportioned to the food that there is for them ; and, as no 



