104 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



buttercup stems, uncropped by the cows ; of plantains, 

 with their ribbed leaves almost rivalling the blades of 

 the grasses ; and of little spreading daisies, with their 

 close rosette of foliage pressed hard and tight against 

 the naked ground, so as to prevent the struggling 

 young seedlings of the grass from pushing their way 

 between the overlapping tufts. It is just the same in 

 the meadow : there, in between the haulms of grass, you 

 get a thick and matted undergrowth of Dutch clover, 

 yellow medick, and rusty-red sorrel, besides all the taller 

 meadow flowers such as buttercups, corn poppies, and 

 ox-eye daisies. These last make up a large and curious 

 group, the true weeds of cultivation. They are as 

 purely of human origin in most cases as wheat or barley : 

 they have assumed their existing shapes under the in- 

 fluence of man's handicraft. And yet they differ in one 

 important particular that they are dependent upon him 

 involuntarily instead of voluntarily : they are results of 

 his weakness, not of his strength. 



Take first these two wild yellow weeds by the hedge- 

 row as examples of what man's definite and intentional 

 selection has done. A casual observer would hardly 

 know them from charlock ; for they have much the same 

 golden flowers, and grow in much the same straggling 

 weedy way ; but their leaves have no stalks, and even 

 in the rougher of the two they are far from being so 

 prickly to handle. This one with the bluish tinge upon 

 its foliage a Greek would have called it glaucous is 

 wild cabbage ; and from just such a tall, stringy weed 

 as that, all stalk and no heart, constant human selec- 

 tion has developed not only all the garden cabbages, red 

 or white, but hoc genus omne cauliflowers, broccolis, 



