WEEDS OF OUR FIELDS, WAYSIDES AND TOWNS. 11 



Tussilago Far far a, which seenis to have a readily traceable 

 origin ; at least, it seemed to give me the key to it in the 

 places where I have seen it unmistakably wild. At a 

 moderate height in the Alps, streams occasionally cut 

 through the clay of an old moraine — and there is the 

 coltsfoot. Almost the highest plant on the moraine of 

 the retreating Eosenlaui glacier it appeared again. Here, 

 doubtless, was the place of its preservation, and small 

 wonder is it that it should nourish where man makes 

 railway embankments, or leaves a hard clay soil to bake 

 in the sun and consolidate in rain. 



But while for a good many of these weeds a probable 

 origin may be assigned within the British Isles, it is 

 almost certain that some, perhaps many, are plants that 

 have attached themselves to man and have followed him 

 from his primaeval home. The damp forest or marsh- 

 land is not adapted to annual plants. The barren 

 mountain top, the river gravel, the sea shore may be better, 

 but the conditions are rather cruel. I venture, therefore, 

 to suggest that the evidence of the weeds may be valuable 

 as collateral proof in any attempt to indicate the probable 

 cradle of man as a cultivator of the soil. Pardon me if 

 I refer to the ancient mystery in Genesis of the curse of 

 the ground — " thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth 

 unto thee, and thou shaft eat the herb of the field," — a 

 brief and graphic description of the effect of this new dis- 

 turbance of the ancient order of nature. Biologically 

 speaking, it gave a new lease of life to many species of 

 plants which were previously being driven into the ends 

 of the earth, and brought back the exiles, strong in 

 certain lessons that they had learned in adversity, to 

 follow man's victorious path as a mixed multitude 

 of sturdy and unwelcome satellites. But their ancestors 

 must have lived not very remote from man. And I 



