XXXVII. WEEDS OF THE FIELD 
“In the garden more grows 
Than the gardener sows.” 
—Spanish Proverb. 
Weeds were not invented by the Devil to plague the farmer. 
Oh, no. Weeds were here before there were farmers. They 
were here holding their own on the bits of fallow ground nature 
allowed them—on the new-made bar left by a receding flood; 
on the denuded slope laid bare by a landslide; in the ashes of 
a devastating fire: wherever there was a bit of soil left open, 
weeds were ready to enter in and possess it. 
Weeds were fewer before the days of agriculture than now; 
for nature kept most of the land occupied with more per- 
manent crops. It is due to the farmer himself that weeds 
have become so abundant. The farmer turns the soil and 
makes it ready for new occupants. He could not prepare it 
more to the liking of the weeds if he were doing it expressly 
for their benefit. They like the tilth of soil his plow and 
harrow yield; they like his tillage and his fertilizers; they 
like his dust-mulch; and, if they do not chance to be up- 
rooted, they show their appreciation by lusty growth. What 
magnificent specimens of weeds they do become in a rich 
field. The wild ones of the same species that we find in the 
woods are puny things in comparison. 
Weeds have a wonderful way—it takes a figure from the 
language of business to express it—a wonderful way of 
“setting in on the ground floor’. The field is no sooner pre- 
pared than they are found occupying it. They nearly all 
spring from seeds, and their seeds have great facility at 
getting about. Seeds of dandelion, thistle, hawkweed, etc., 
travel by air and settle in every field. Seeds of cocklebur, 
burdock, pitchforks (fig. 39), etc., travel by pack animals, 
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