356 Mails Work on the Farm 



but the space they occupy has been much circum- 

 scribed, and will be limited more and more, as more 

 land comes into cultivation. 



Coffee from Abyssinia, the sugar-cane, peach, and 

 orange from Asia, are all extensively cultivated in the 

 Western world, while the two last have run wild, and 

 form considerable groves in some parts; and whole 

 forests of coco-palms waved on the islands near 

 Panama within a hundred years of their first intro- 

 duction. All these were valuable additions to the 

 vegetable wealth of the new world ; but the more 

 foreigners, the fewer natives. The green things were 

 quite as many, bjat they were different. 



So much, then, for the useful plants. It has been 

 said that 'no beautiful or useful organic species, 

 animal or vegetable, becomes naturalized in any 

 country without the intervention of man, while the 

 noisome and ugly succeed in establishing themselves 

 in spite of him ' — a sweeping assertion, which, as re- 

 gards the former half of it, is hardly borne out by 

 facts. But the second half is undoubtedly true 

 enough. 



Though we cannot consent to call * noisome arfd 

 ugly ' the weeds which beautify the fields and meadows 

 of Europe, we must admit that they have followed 

 man quite without his invitation, thougl^ not without 

 his unconscious help, and that in many cases he has 

 to fight a sore battle with them, and does not always 

 come off conqueror. 



Most of our weeds have made their way to the 

 West by the various ways already mentioned, and 

 among them, it must be confessed, some which are 

 not only not ornamental, but most injurious to the 



