Pawsoji : Weeds. 



7 



varied conditions to suit a larger rang-e of plants. When this 

 g-reat change by cultivation and surface disturbance came about 

 — very slowly probably at first — the native flora would tend to 

 change somewhat and to develop qualities and organs which 

 would enable it to take full advantage of these altered con- 

 ditions, and there can be little doubt that new species would 

 gradually be evolved. 



A garden or a ploughing-field is usually surrounded by 

 hedge-banks, and woods and pastures are near at hand, all 

 green with the natural vegetation of the district. One would 

 think, therefore, that the weeds of the tilled ground would be 

 the seedlings of the neighbouring herbage. But, in fact, they 

 are nothing of the sort. Hardly one of them is to be found on 

 a hedge-mound, or in a meadow or pasture, or in woods. In 

 vain will you look there for the charlock that you hoe out of 

 your turnips, or the groundsel that you pick off your flower 

 beds. In truth, these plants could not live, not any of them, 

 among the meadow-grass or with the wildlings under the 

 hedges, for they are annual plants — all of them — and there is no 

 room for them there : the ground is taken up. 



Nature is sometimes rather an unnatural mother, if one may 

 say so, and she seems to dislike these annual children of hers. 

 There is no place for them anywhere : they are outcasts. They 

 must exist where they can — on rocks, on barren spots, on the 

 sea-shore, on ground which no one else covets. There they lurk 

 in these unfavourable places, often dwarfed and stunted, living 

 as best they may, but always on the look-out for some earth- 

 slip or fall of rock, or other disturbance of the ground-surface 

 which they may seize upon and occupy for a little while until 

 they are dispossessed by the slow- but sure-moving perennials. 

 I am afraid that annuals must be blamed (like the rest of us) for 

 bringing much of their misfortune upon themselves. They are 

 improvident creatures : they save nothing. Perhaps they have 

 observed how we plunder the thrifty biennials (cabbages, 

 turnips, onions, celery, and the like) of the stores which they 

 have accumulated with so much labour, just as they are about 

 to make use of them, treating them much as we do the poor 

 hive-bees. Anyhow, they go in for a short life and a merry one. 

 They feed near the surface with fibrous roots and get plenty of 

 nourishment, but they store up none of it. They use it all as 

 fast as they get it, to grow, and to flower, and to seed, and 

 then, exhausted, and with no food to tide them over the winter, 

 they die. Like other improvident people they usually have large 



1905 January 2. ' 



