SOME AMERICAN COLONISTS. 223 



rancan Europe. In England it appears chiefly in the 

 southern counties, and does not thrive well in the mid- 

 lands or the north. But some other American weeds have 

 had better luck among us ; such, for example, as the 

 tiny white claytonia, a straggling round-leaved succulent 

 plant, not unlike the garden purslanes. This queer little 

 tufted trailer, a familiar weed in American gardens, has 

 thickly overrun many parts of Lancashire, having doubt- 

 less been landed at Liverpool. In another direction, it 

 has effected an entry by the port of London, and spread in 

 abundance over many parts of Surrey, besides making 

 little excursions up the river to Oxfordshire and attack- 

 ing several of the neighbouring counties on its onward 

 march. It is still rapidly advancing ; and though but a na- 

 turalised alien, it threatens before many years to become 

 one of our most annoying and persistent garden-weeds. 

 A rather pretty American balsam, with orange blos- 

 soms spotted with red, has in like manner made itself a 

 firm local habitation on the banks of the Wey and sundry 

 others among the Surrey streams. Then there is the 

 Canadian Michaelmas daisy, long completely naturalised 

 on the Continent, and now beginning to push its way 

 boldly along the grassy margin of southern English 

 roadsides. All these are thoroughgoing weeds, ex- 

 tremely troublesome in America itself as well as in the 

 European countries where they have established them- 

 selves ; and they are rendered dangerous by the fact 

 that they come from a very large continent mainly con- 

 sisting of open prairie, which ensures them excellent 

 weedy constitutions, as the final survivors in an excep- 

 tionally severe struggle for existence among highly 

 adapted prairie plants. They have come across to us by 



