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years, there has existed another though a less conspicuous wave, 
another though less prominent tide, of emigration. Westward in 
its direction like the former, it has silently accomplished results, 
which, though they may not strike the superficial eye, yet are not 
the less to be noted as of vast importance. I allude to the slow 
yet noiseless emigration of European plants, which has been going 
on for so many years ; and which most probably commenced when 
the first Eastern vessel touched the shores. Side by side with the 
displacement of the red man by the white man has gone on the 
displacement of the red man’s vegetable companions, by plants 
which accompanied the white man from his transatlantic home. 
■\Vhen the Pilgrim Fathers, who went over in the ‘ Mayflower ’ 
from Plymouth Sound, made themselves at home on the banks of 
the Charles ; when tlie successors of Champlain and Cartier estab- 
lished themselves along the Saint Lawrence ; and as the descendants 
of the earliest colonists first peopled Maryland and Virginia, 
and appropriated the shores of the Chesapeake, thus ousting the 
native inhabitants, and pushing them further and still further west; 
so have the homely weeds of England and Prance made themselves' 
at home in the JSTew World; established themselves in its soil, 
appropriated its fields, its gardens, and its ivaysides. 4for have the 
older States alone been seized by these European invaders : the 
stream has flowed with the ever-flowing tide further west ; and as no 
village or hamlet is without its population of European descent, so, 
too, it is never without its plant population of European weeds. 
To the Americans born and reared amongst them, these things 
have but little of the significance which they possess to him who 
comes across the Atlantic thoroughly conversant with the flora of 
Europe, and naturally expecting to find as complete a change, as well 
of plants as of place, as it would be reasonable to look for with three 
thousand miles of Atlantic Sea between. Differences there will be, 
but the fact that the new country, with its millions of inhabitants, is 
using the same language, laws, and customs as the old one he has 
so recently left, makes this similarity less striking. The same is 
true of the flora, the whole country teeming with plant life not 
by any means indigenous to it, but very laigely made up liy 
