12 Prociaimep Pants. 
the following pages, therefore, a detailed account is given only of the 
undoubtedly poisonous plants, and of the others a full discussion will only 
be found where the plants are so abundant as to be troublesome weeds. 
Proclaimed Plants. 
A coloured plate and a simplified technical description are given of 
each plant proclaimed since the issue of the Thistle Pamphlet in 1893, 
and in regard to the Thistles figured therein a simple key for identification 
is given, which will be found more useful for diagnosis than the cumbrous, 
involved and, to the farmer, more or less incomprehensible descriptions of 
the Thistle Pamphlet. Compliance with the directions for eradication 
given for the different proclaimed plants will serve as a defence from pro- 
secutions under the Thistle Act. Hence, only short, safe, straightforward 
directions for eradication are given, since the fancy methods of weed 
eradication frequently advocated are less certain, are frequently dangerous, 
and are often as costly as the simple and thorough, but move laborious 
methods. 
Poisonous sprays such as copper sulphate (2 to 3 per cent. strength) 
may sometimes be used to keep down weeds (Charlock, &c.) in the seedling 
condition among cereal crops, especially if applied during dry weather, 
but their use is never advisable if it can be avoided, and when once a 
perennial is firmly rooted its destruction requires doses of poison sufficient 
to injuriously affect the soil and surrounding vegetation for some time. 
No compounds containing arsenic should be used for the poisoning of weeds 
on pastures or cultivated ground. 
There is no doubt. that many of the proclaimed weeds here described 
are spreading rapidly, with increasing injury to agriculture, and that this 
fact is due to the imperfect administration of the Thistle Act. In so far 
as the latter is due to ignorance, the issue and wide circulation of the 
accompanying descriptions and plates should remove one source of laxity, 
but the wide divergence in the attention paid to the Act in neighbouring 
shires will always militate against the permanent eradication or suppression 
of any particular weed. Permanent -good can only be attained by simul- 
taneous and centrally organized efforts, extending over wide areas sur- 
rounded by natural barriers to migration. 
DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE COMMONER WEEDS. 
Dicotyledons. 
Seeds with two cotyledons. Flowers rarely with the parts in three. 
Herbs, shrubs, or trees, the latter with a growing cambium layer between 
the wood and the inner soft layer of bark on the: stem. 
POLYPETALE. 
The petals free in each flower from base to apex. 
Thalamiflorze.—All the parts of the flower, sepals, petals, stamens, and 
carpels arise separately and regularly from the top of the flower stalk, 
termed by botanists, the thalamus. 
RanunNcuLace# (Buttercup F amity). 
Annuals, or perennials with tuberous, bulbous or rhizomic underground 
parts. Herbs usually with five sepals and petals, and numerous stamens. 
Petals sometimes absent. Fruits small, one seeded, clustered on top of the 
. 
