THISTLEDOWN BLOWS. 



\>\ 



we arc obliged artificially to fence in and protect with 

 all possible precautions. But even so, in spite of all our 

 endeavours to expel nature with our civilised pitchfork, 

 ' tamcn usque recurrit.' 



The thistle that is overrunning the Morne Close 

 ranks, indeed, among the best adapted and most suc- 

 cessful of its kind : which is only the converse way of 

 saying that it is a most troublesome and ineradicable 

 weed. Creeping-thistle, we call it, from its peculiar 

 habits : for, besides its open mode of propagation by 

 its floating seeds, it has a sneaking trick of spreading 

 underground by its buried rootstock, which sends up 

 fresh stems every year from the joints or nodes. It is 

 the commonest of all its race — not in England only, but 

 throughout the globe ; for its winged fruits have been 

 carried to every quarter of the world with seed-corn and 

 clovers. Cut it down, and a new head springs from 

 below the wound ; hack it close to the ground, and the 

 rootstock pushes out a fresh young shoot from an un- 

 suspected corner ; harrow it up bodily, and the seed 

 blows over at harvest-time from all the surrounding 

 fields, just at the right moment for the autumn ploughing. 



For hardiness of constitution it has no equal ; and 

 this is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that universal 

 cross-fertilisation has become absolutely certain by the 

 separation of the sexes on different plants. This globular 

 head that I have just swished off has none but stamen- 

 bearing florets ; this other more conical cluster, that I 

 am trying to cut with the aid of my knife and handker- 

 chief, contains nothing, on the contrary, but pistils and 

 seeds. Such careful separation of the two elements 

 perfectly ensures a good cross in each generation, and so 



