26 E. S. Rand, Jr., on Heather in the United States. 
pasture which has formerly been covered with it. It is also 
well known that i cutting will in time kill any bush 
or shrub, and there is nothing strange in supposing that the 
heather may atet. its pene destruction have come up year 
after year among the grass, and been mowed down unnoticed ; 
indeed it would have been strange if a farmer had noticed 
such a plant unless its encroachments called his attention to it. 
Nor is it improbable that the plants now well established in the 
locality originated from seed of the plants destroyed fifty years 
ago. Most probably the heather has kept growing all the time, 
more or less. But allowing that the present plants are only ten 
ears old, and that the original plants were destroyed fifty years 
ago, say in 1810, this gives us only forty years for the seed to 
have retained its vitality, by no means an improbable time. 
r again, the present plant may have sprung from seed of seed- 
lings from the original plants, es the heather flowers very 
young, is a low growing shrub and might have flowered year 
after year unnoticed; indeed to give origin to the present num- 
ber of p pois it is only necessary for one low branch to have 
escaped the scythe and abies seed. This is not only not im- 
Bom’ bat et probable. Loudon remarks, ‘“ When heathy 
gree iisosied to the plough it should never be 
Kept rostr ga many years together, unless it is richly ma- 
as the seeds retain their vitality for many years, 
niests coal ” fail at sith end of a few seasons to make their ap- 
pearance among the gra 
Now, as to the age “of the plants: fifty years ago, say i 
1810, there were plants i in existence “as large as a bushel bas ket 
or larger, ” the question arises, how old were those plants ? 
have been in existence for more than a cen tury, which carries ‘t 
back to about the year 1700. Beyond this we have no evi- 
dence and can only assert the probability that the plant existing 
at so early a date in wie an unlikely and out-of-the-way place, 
was ‘not introduced b 
The town of Ponneebaaes is five miles southeast of Lowell 
and tweaty miles northwest from Boston; it was formerly a 
of Bellerica, and was an Indiaa sallsge called Warressit. 
Eee: an oe off from ealeriensn Z 1734. Bellerica was “— 
ut very sparcely, and the ulation 0: 
iT} is, we @ believe, les than two | ae aa 
i 
t 
Pearse eererset os 
eee 
