A. Gray—North American Flora. 325 
mals of one country to another. So, while an agricultural 
people displaced the aborigines which the forest sheltered and 
nourished, the herbs, purposely or accidentally brought with 
them, took possession of the clearings, and prevailed more or 
less over the native and rightful heirs to the soil,—not enough 
to supplant them, indeed, but enough to impart a certain ad- 
ventitious Old World aspect to the fields and other open 
in floral show. The common Barberry of the Old World is 
an early denizen of New England. The tall Mullein, of a 
wholly alien race, shoots up in every pasture and new clearing, 
accompanied by the common Thistle, while another imported 
Thistle, called in the States “the Canada Thistle,” has become 
a veritable nuisance, at which much legislation has been leveled 
botanist of lon experience tells me that, where the two grow 
together, cows freely feed upon the undoubtedly native species, 
and leave the naturalized one untouched. 
ple, they may have played somewhat the same part in the once 
forest-clad W eenens vay that they have been playing here. 
