SOME AMERICAN COLONISTS. 221 



XXXVII. 



SOME AMERICAN COLONISTS. 



The commonest weed in this little English garden at 

 the present moment is a small creeping wood-sorrel, 

 with the characteristic shamrock leaf (for wood-sorrel, 

 not clover, is the true trefoil of St Patrick and of Ireland), 

 but bearing yellow blossoms instead of the pretty lilac- 

 veined petals of our own familiar spring species. It is 

 an interesting little plant in its own way ; for, contrary 

 to all the natural traditions of emigration, it has moved 

 eastward, against the way of the sun, and has come to 

 us across the Atlantic from the broad central plains of 

 the American continent. There is something stranj^^e in 

 the notion of a weed from the New World ovcrrunninsr 

 the fields of the Old, and living down the native in- 

 habitants of more anciently civilised Europe. Of course, 

 we all take it for granted that our own thistles, chick- 

 weeds, and groundsels ought rightfully to accompany 

 British wheat and barley to every part of the colonisable 

 world : indeed, the North American Indians call our 

 common English ribwort 'white man's foot,' because 

 they say it springs up naturally wherever the heel of the 

 pale faces has trodden the soil. Sir Joseph Hooker found 

 our weedy English shepherd's purse — itself a colonist 

 from Central Asia— growing abundantly over a solitary 

 antarctic islet ; and traced it finally to a single seed 



