A Handful of Weeds 361 
upon a time served as a lure to the insects whose 
services are now dispensed with. 
’ 
This “‘ degeneration,’’ as it is regarded by natur- 
alists, is a sad result to follow upon untold years 
spent in our society. For the plantain is a ‘‘ weed 
of civilization’’ which, from time out of mind, has 
sought human society and that of the best. So 
persistently does it haunt the track of man that 
one of its old popular names is ‘‘ 
waybread.”’ 
This fondness of the plant for the edges of paths 
and roads has given rise to a German story that 
it was once a maiden, who, while watching by the 
wayside for her lover, was transformed into a weed 
by cruel magic; yet constant through all changes, 
she watches by the wayside still. 
The North American Indians call the plantain 
‘‘the print of the white man’s foot.’’ Longfellow 
alludes to this in those lines of ‘‘ Hiawatha’’ which 
describe the coming of Europeans into the wild 
lands of the western world: 
“Where so’ere they tread, beneath them 
Springs a flower unknown among us, 
Springs the ‘White Man’s Foot’ in blossom.” 
Has it followed us westward and ever westward 
out of that mysterious land of the morning where 
human life began? Its origin, like that of its sister 
