8 



Pawson : Weeds. 



families which they leave quite unprovided for. These wretched 

 children have no inheritance — not a spot of ground whereon to 

 set their feet. 



Nature evidently meant these annual plants to serve as a 

 finishing-touch to her great scheme of decorating the earth — 

 just to cover bare spots and to conceal blemishes : so she made 

 them quick-moving (they will at need sprout, bloom, and sow 

 their seed within the three months), and she i^eeps them always 

 at hand (they are certain and profuse seed-bearers). 



It is man who has been the great benefactor of the 

 annuals. It is almost entirely to him that these plants owe 

 their well-being and their numbers. When he began — no 

 doubt at first with very rude pick or mattock, whether of bronze 

 or iron I know not — to break into the earth and in the sweat 

 of his brow to eat his bread they saw their opportunity. This 

 was the supreme moment of their race. Down they came from 

 the cliffs and crags, up from the sea-shore, across the sand- 

 wastes, to enter upon this goodly land where they never before 

 could obtain a footing. For them the g-olden age was opening. 

 Man was going" to cultivate annual crops and they could share 

 the ground with them. Here, at last, in the cornfields, they 

 would be free from the persecution of the hateful perennials ; 

 for they could be in flower when the others had but just unfolded 

 their cotyledons; they could sow their seed in the furrows where 

 their uprooted rivals lay withering. 



Once in possession of the tilled ground the annuals have 

 never left it, and they never will leave it until it is allowed to 

 revert to its natural state, that is to say, until its reoccupation 

 by the perennial plants of the district. 



But we must not suppose that we have with us now the 

 original settlers, any more than that we have as our neighbour 

 the cave-man who lived on hips and haws, or the ancient 

 Britons who painted themselves blue and drove about in chariots 

 with scythes to their wheels. These wild annuals have become 

 weeds. They have used themselves to rich living- : they have 

 adapted themselves to their surroundings : they have thriven 

 exceedingly and multiplied and increased. They are no longer 

 the starvelings of the sands, the ragged regiments of the rocks, 

 but plump well-nourished citizens with everything- handsome 

 about tiiem. If our garden vegetables improve under cultivation, 

 why not their companions, the weeds, who share their advan- 

 tages ? It is not, therefore, strange (thoug:h at first sight it 

 may appear so) that those plants which are our common weeds 



Naturalist. 



