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IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE 
they utilized it to good advantage. They climbed over the 
whole eastern portion of the levee, concealed its slopes with a 
thick, rank growth, and carpeted the top with green. They 
struck their rootsi into the fresh, virgin soil that the steam shovel 
had given them and prospered wonderfully. There were tall 
ragweed and wild sunflowers as high as my head, thick sods of 
wild grass, patches of a Cyperus that burrowed in the streaks 
of sand that lay here and there upon the surface, Jimson- weeds 
as high as my waist and with stalks as thick as my wrist at the 
base, single plants of the sprawling amaranth making mats six 
feet or more in diameter, and pigweed, pigweed everywhere. 
The pigweed was the dominant plant. It was ubiquitous. It 
led the forlorn hope against the forbidding strongholds of the 
sand on the far shore ; together with its near relative, the goose- 
foot, it constituted the bulk of the flrst line of advance into the 
unfavorable western end of the levee; back where the plants 
stood thicker it asserted itself powerfully. In one or two limited 
spots it was outnumbered by other plants: on the reverse slope 
of the levee at its extreme eastern end, for instance, the tali 
ragweed was the dominant, but the tall ragweed was practically 
limited to just this narrow area, and you could scarcely walk 
ten feet anywhere on the whole embankment without brushing 
shoulders with a pigweed, and here and there, especially toward 
the western end, it would appropriate whole stretches of the 
terrain unto itself. 
And it rejoiced in its supremacy in true kingly fashion. It 
built up tall, slender spires, and it spread itself out in thick, 
round bushes. It disported in half a score of interesting va- 
riants : in shape from stiff and stocky to slender and graceful ; 
in color from green to red, on leaves, or stem, or seed-head. 
There were stout, green pigweeds, and slender, green pigweeds ; 
and there were stout, red pigweeds; and slender, red pigweeds; 
and there were pigweeds, both stout and slender, that were gor- 
geously variegated and pied. 
In pitiful contrast to the sleek and prosperous condition of 
the weeds wais the losing fight that the few stray cultivated 
plants were carrying on. Formerly part of the area where the 
channel and levee now are was inhabited, and some of the houses 
had vegetable and flower gardens attached. When the steam 
shovel’s wrecking revolution swept through, most of these pam- 
pered, man-served vegetable aristocrats perished, but by chance 
