Make Thorough Work. 95 



resource left to us. This we will now 

 describe. 



18. Make thorough zuork. When the 

 eradication of weeds is undertaken, the 

 work should be made as complete as pos- 

 sible, and be effected in the shortest possi- 

 ble time. The cheapness of the process 

 is usually in direct porportion to its com- 

 pleteness, and to the brevity of the period 

 occupied in completing it. It is quite pos- 

 sible to destroy creeping perennials in a 

 single season, except only as to the seeds 

 which remain in the soil. It is the lack 

 of thoroughness in the modes usually 

 adopted, rather than the modes themselves, 

 that renders the destruction of this class 

 of weeds so extremely difficult and so 

 expensive. As a rule, creeping perennials 

 are merely checked by the cleaning proc- 

 esses employed, and by no means destroy- 

 ed by them. Hence the root-stocks left 

 in the soil at once commence to grow. 

 They push out in every direction. They 

 are carried to and fro with the plow and 

 spring into life everywhere, so that in from 

 two to four or five years they have so 

 possessed the soil again that a similar proc- 

 ess of reducing them will have to be 



