3g4 The Parasites of Civilisation. Q u ty> 
wild animals of the most different groups are exceedingly 
beautiful. But where is the beauty, from a human point ol 
view, of the rat, the mouse, the cockroach, the bed-bug, the 
chigoe, the flea, the crane-fly, the wireworm, and the bulk 
of their associates ? Perhaps the Colorado beetle is the 
only tolerably looking animal species which is at once 
hostile to man and increases at the approach of. cultivation. 
With the plants parasitic upon human civilisation the 
case is very similar. Name our chief weeds, as distinct 
from wild plants, and you name those which have the least 
claims to beauty. Their flowers, if sufficiently conspicuous 
to be called “ flowers ” in the popular sense of the term, ' 
are for the most part yellow. Now at the risk of being 
called Philistines by the iBsthetic School, we must mention 
that yellow flowers must be assigned to the lowest rank. 
Nature seems to produce them with the greatest ease, just 
as the British workman turns out jerry-work, without special 
effort or attention. A weed with a large conspicuous blue, 
purple, or crimson flower would be something out of the 
common track. . . 
In this connection we come upon the curious fact that 
no true weed — no plant which thrives all the more luxu- 
riantly for the labours of the husbandman and the gaidenei 
— gives off fragrance, either from its flowers or its leaves. 
Many of them, on the contrary, are decidedly offensive, or 
at the best scentless. 
Another noteworthy circumstance is that so many of our 
worst plant-parasites on civilisation belong to the order of 
Compositse, to which some botanists assign the highest rank 
in the vegetable world ; plants which flourish as being emi- 
nently adapted to present conditions, and are consequently 
— success being now the received test of merit — entitled to 
pre-eminence. They may be considered as in some soit 
analogous to the financiers and usurers who, under the star 
of Judas Iscariot, thrive best among us men of the nine- 
teenth century. . 
It is singular, and not by any means cheering, that the 
exceptional power of multiplication, and the tenacity which 
we have noted in vermin and weeds, should be so singularly 
connected with inutility and even positive harmful.ness to 
man> — w ith ugliness, as shown in the absence of brilliance 
and perfume, and with mean or insignificant forms. So 
* Surely we want here a word, or a pair of words, to distinguish flowers 
which have a conspicuous corolla, calyx, or both, from flowers in which these 
parts are wanting, or are so slightly developed as to escape the notice ot the 
general public. 
