Pawso7i : Weeds. 



13 



-dominant race. If they have been modified from the old types, 

 this has not been in a strengthening- struggle for existence with 

 forms almost equally strong. They have had no rivals ; they 

 have endured no hardships. They have rather developed their 

 powers of enjoyment — of feeding on the surface in the rich and 

 loosened soil — of expanding endless blossoms in the open sunny 

 fields. How can creatures be strong when they lead such easy 

 lives ? They have the ground dug for them and manured for 

 them. They are coddled and comforted like garden plants. 



Therefore they do not spread over the country ; they do not 

 dispossess the wild annuals of their old haunts. They keep 

 within their fenced cities : they do not dare to try their fortune 

 in the open field ; for they have become soft and enervated in 

 their luxury and could not now maintain themselves on the 

 shores and the sea-cliffs whence their ancestors emigrated. It 

 is the fact that they can hardly exist outside walled ground. 

 They lean entirely upon agriculture and upon man, and if he 

 were to disappear from the earth, in a decade — nay, within 

 a lustrum — there would hardly be a cornfield weed left in the 

 country. 



I chose this subject to-night because it is one which has 

 always interested me, and as it seems to be rather neglected 

 I thought I might perhaps be able to make a few remarks upon 

 it which had not occurred to everybody ; but I do not know 

 that weeds are plants so especially suited to the consideration 

 of naturalists after all, being, as they are, a sort of artificial 

 vegetation. There is a kind of proprietorship in them, too. 

 They belong to someone else, like the corn and the cultivated 

 flowers. To have them of one's own, one must possess a 

 ploughing-field or at least a garden ; otherwise they must be 

 sought for among the wheat or cabbages of someone else ; and 

 this is always repugnant to a true son of Nature who most 

 properh' considers that the universe belongs to him.' 



Ihm gfehort das Weite was sein Pfeil erreicht 

 Das ist seine Beute was da kreucht und fleug-t. 



The whole earth is the hunter's within the range of his bow. 

 I confess that my own heart is not in gardens and in cornfields, 

 but in the woods and the hedgerows, and in the moors and the 

 mountains. These are the true inheritance of the naturalist, 

 for he knows that they belong to him by right and to none other. 



Ladies and gentlemen, it is not necessary for me to com- 

 mend to you the study of Natural History, for you are alread}' 

 engaged in it, and I am sure that there are few here who w^ould 



1905 January 2. 



