28 A GARDEN DIARY 
whether the same mode of reasoning has ever 
been held to apply to weeds. If so, I cannot 
say that the plan appears to me to answer. At 
least I can safely swear that I have never called 
one of them by its proper botanical name in my 
life, yet they rush in on us from all sides, and 
persecute us none the less impishly. 
There is one particularly diabolical individual, 
which has clearly marked this garden as its 
prey, and marches continually to and fro of it 
like a roaring lion. What its correct name is 
I shall in all probability never know, though I 
have carefully cross-examined several botanical 
works on the subject. It has narrow fleshy 
leaves; a mass of roots, constructed of equal 
parts of pin wire and gutta-percha; the meanest 
of pinky white flowers, and a smell like sour hay. 
It is not the leaves, the flowers, the roots, or 
even the smell, that I so much object to. It 
is the capacity it possesses of flinging out off- 
shoots of itself to incredible distances, which 
offshoots no sooner touch ground than they begin 
to weave a kind of ugly green net over every- 
thing within reach, enmeshing it all into as dense 
a mass of leaves and roots as is the parent plant. 
Although I am no nearer extirpating it than I 
was before, since yesterday I have at least been 
able to name it, a satisfaction which many a poor 
Speaker must have been thankful for, especially 
in an age grown too picked and tender to allow 
