11 
States they met a westward-moving horde of introduced 
weeds, — weeds so hardened by centuries of struggle 
against man's dominion that thetumbleweeds stood Httle 
show of gaining a permanent foothold among them. 
Even on the plains the tumbleweeds no longer have 
the chance they once had. There are few places where 
extensive breaking of the native sod is now being done. 
Even where it is still being carried on the sod is much 
more frequently prepared for a crop the first year than 
formerly, and though it be left vacant the tumbleweeds 
must fight for a foothold with many varieties of intro- 
duced wee(is. Where they once swept for miles over the 
plains they are now almost certain to make only a pitiful 
little run of a hundred yards or so only to be brought up 
by a hedge row, fence, grove, or cornfield, there in an un- 
congenial spot to drop those thousands of seeds intended 
to be scattered afar across the prairies. 
There are probably only a few of the ecological factors 
which have influenced the rise and fall of the tumbleweeds. 
Plant species like men and notions have their periods of 
development, their little day of power, and then their 
swift decline. Ferns, scouring rushes and club-mosses 
gr(jw in bogs and swamps in dark and shadj- places and 
in crevices of naked rocks, and yet their ancestors once 
dominated and clothed with thick forest large areas of the 
earth's surface. Could we but tell the whole of the life 
storj- of these plants or even the complete story of the 
humble tumbleweeds, might it not rival in interest and 
wonder the stor>' of the rise and fall of Persia, Thebes or 
XIacedon ? 
SOME PLANT MYTHS. 
Superstition is about the last thing the human animal 
gets out of his system in progressing from ignorance to 
enlightenment. Although he may discard its grosser forms, 
he continues to cling to a belief in charms, signs and mir- 
acles and gives them up unwillingly. The thriving business 
