284 NOTES ON THE FLORA OF HAMILTON. 



portion of our flora is made up of naturalized plants. These naturally 

 divide themselves into two classes : weeds v/hich attend cultivation, 

 and cultivated plants which find the conditions of existence so favour- 

 able that they become weeds. TJ^e phenomena attending the change 

 of cultivated plants into weeds will, in my opinion, well repay obser- 

 vation, on account of their connection with climatic influences, and' 

 their bearing on the question of the original home of the plants 

 themselves, and hence on the course of civilization, as well as on 

 account of the light they may throAv on the question of the amount 

 and limits of the variability of species. We have in Hamilton many 

 of the common plants of this class, as e. g. the Jerusalem Oak, and the 

 Hemp; and I notice with interest patches of the Summer Savory 

 (Satureia Jwrtensis, L.) appearing year after year on dry gravel hills 

 and railway cuttings through gi'avel near the Bay. According to 

 Gray's Manual, it has run wild on the prairies of Illinois and on 

 some rocky islands near the Falls of the Ohio. If it succeeds 

 in establishing itself at Hamilton, we may infer that the summer 

 climate of that place sufficiently resembles that of its original Mediter- 

 ranean home, and that the seeds are capable of surviving the rigour 

 of our winters. 



The mode of introduction and the i-ate of the progress made by the 

 weeds which attend on civilized man, are phenomeiia which we have 

 in this country unsurpassed facilities for observing, and careful obser- 

 vations on these points may be of great value. Although nearly all 

 these weeds come from Europe, perhaps the most interesting one in 

 our lists comes from tropical America. I refer to the Sping Clotbur 

 (XantJiium spinosum, L.), which has become an exceedingly common 

 weed in the gutters of the streets and in the gardens of the town of 

 Dundas. I have never found it except in Dundas, though I undei;- 

 stand that it occurs at points between Hamilton and the Niagara 

 frontier. It has, as far as I am aware, never hitherto been reported 

 as occurring in Canada, and I am inclined to think that it has been 

 introduced into Dundas with the raw cotton since the establishment 

 of the cotton mill in that place. I notice that Gi"ay, in his Manual, 

 speaks of the Viper's Bugloss {Echium vulgare, L.) as rare northward, ' 

 but a troublesome weed in the cultivated fields of Virginia. It may 

 not be generally known that it is very abimdant and exceedingly 

 troublesome in the County of Glengarry, apparently filling the. same 

 place there that the Canada thistle does on exhausted farms in other 

 parts' of Ontario. In many parts of that county whole farms appear 



