12 WEEDS. 



solved — it must be faced ; and, impelled by a sense of 

 responsibility, but with great diffidence, the writer 

 ventures to put forward a few suggestions, which, if 

 put in practice, would, he considers, go a long way in 

 coping with this evil. 



1st. Steps must be taken to prevent by law the 

 sale of impure seeds ; and to effect — 



2d. The establishment of governmental seed- testing 

 institutions in each of the three kingdoms. 



3d. Grand juries should be obliged to compel those 

 who contract for the care and repair of roads to remove 

 and destroy all weeds found on, or growing on, the 

 roadsides. 



4th. The police or other local authority should be 

 empowered to prosecute owners of fields or railway 

 embankments, and overseers of commons, on which 

 weeds were allowed to seed to the detriment and injury 

 of the neighbourhood. 



[It will not do to throw the onus on the aggrieved 

 neighbour (as the law does in some countries) of pro- 

 secuting the offending party. People will suffer a 

 great deal of this kind of loss and annoyance sooner 

 than go to law with their neighbours and arouse bad 

 feeling.] 



In concluding this chapter the writer desires to 

 state his belief that this subject would long ago have 

 been dealt with on some such lines as sugijested above 

 if we had had, what most other civilised governments 

 have, viz., a Minister and Department of Agriculture, 

 under the auspices of which might be diverted to the 

 rescue and development of agriculture some portion of 

 that public attention which the extent and importance 

 of such an industry merits. 



