annual, offers a better protnisc of success in conteiulin^ with it tban 
is offered bv any other of our pernicious weeds. The damage 
already done by the Russian thistle is without question slight in 
comparison with the damage which will he done by it if its progress 
is not soon checked. It is a weed peculiarly adapted to the great 
wheat-raising portion of the United States, and its adyent is ominous 
of an oyerwhelming calamity to that region. 
Our State law. Chapter 91 ahoye quoted, is fully adequate so , 
far as any .State enactment can he, and is, so far as the writer has 
seen, the best law possessed by any of the States on the subject. 
All that is needed is to rigidly enforce it in all its pro\ isions; and if 
the proposed National law is enacted and approyed by the President, 
to cordially co-operate with the Oeneral (joyernment in all its efforts 
to eradicate the weed, ^^'hile it is not probable that this .State alone, 
•or even in co-operation with other states, can exterminate the pest, 
so long as large tracts of goyernment land, often once cidti\ ated but 
now abandoned and oyergrown with thistle, act as a constant source 
•of supply ; our people can neyertheless check the spread of the weed, 
eradicate it from their own lands, and by constant yigilance keep it 
confined largely to abandoned or waste lands until such time as 
National aid may be secured to completely wipe it out of existence. 
Where a single plant will produce from 10,000 to 13,000 seeds, and 
often scyeral times that number, it will be readily seen that a few 
tlollars judiciously expended now by eyery locality will haye better 
effect than hundreds or thousands expeiuled two or three years hence. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLANT. 
At the risk of repeating the matter contained in the report of 
the Cactus Committee, it is thought best to giye the following 
technical botanical description of the jilant, as giyen by L. II. Dewey, 
of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, for lUilletin No. 
31, lately issued by the Agricultural Experiment Station of 
Nebraska; lliis technical description to be followed by a popidar one 
from the same Bulletin the object being to make its description so 
clear that the plant will not fail lo be recognized, and its destruction 
thereby better secured. Dr. Dewey's description is as follows: 
TKCIINIC.VI. DKSCH Il' I IOX. 
‘•^Sa/so/a kali A. var. Iruj^us P.C. I’rod. .\lll. 2, 187 
Herbaceous, annual, diffusely branching from the base, usually 
densely bushy at maturity, .3 to i m. high and twice as broad. 
