AN ISLAND GARDEN 33 



atom of it in my small domain could possibly es- 

 cape my eye, and yet its seeds come up more or 

 less every year; I am sure to find one or two 

 plants of it in the garden somewhere. They 

 emerge from the ground, each like a fine yellow 

 hair, till they are an inch and a half or two inches 

 long; they reach with might and main toward 

 the nearest legitimate growing plant, and when 

 they touch it cling to it like a limpet ; then they 

 draw their other end up out of the ground and 

 set up housekeeping for the rest of their lives. 

 They adhere to the unhappy individual upon 

 which they have fixed themselves with a grip that 

 grows more and more horrible ; they suck all its 

 juices, drink all its health and strength and 

 beauty, and fling out trailers to the next and the 

 next and the next, till the whole garden is a mass 

 of ruin and despair. 



For many springs after the first year it ap- 

 peared I used to take a glass tumbler and go all 

 over the beds soon after they were laid out, pull- 

 ing up these tiny yellow hairs, and in an hour or 

 tw r o I have pulled up five or six tumblers full. I 

 gathered them in glasses so that I might be quite 

 sure of all I plucked, and because they could not 

 easily blow away out of such a receptacle. For 

 wherever they might fall, if they touched a green 

 growing thing they would in an astonishingly 

 short space of time make themselves fast for 

 good, or rather for ill ! Every year I watch for it 

 with the most eager vigilance as I weed carefully 

 over the whole surface of the little pleasance, 

 but sometimes it steals up after all the weeding 



