34 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 20. 
and even vears, may not be sufficient to get rid of their 
numerous progeny. 
A few days ago, tbe writer of this was walking in com¬ 
pany with a youth from cockney-land, when his com 
panion directed attention to what, to him, was a most 
wonderful phenomenon. A few yards overhead there was 
nothing remarkable; hut above that height, to as great 
an elevation as it was possible for the eye to discern 
small objects, the atmosphere was thickly studded with 
moving white flossy matter; which, he said, “ could not 
he snow, as the sun was too hot to allow it to remain in 
such a peculiar stratum so long!” On gaining a higher 
ground all doubt was removed. The sun was shining 
very bright; and at a little height above the surface of 
the ground a brisk breeze was playing, and careering in 
it were myriads of Thistle seeds, accompanied with their 
wings of shuttlecock down carrying them hither and 
thither, until they found a suitable resting place in 
which to vegetate and grow; leading the cultivator, in 
future years, to surmise if some enemy had not purposely 
taken the darkness of night to crop his land with thistles. 
The Londoner's notions of seed dispersion and sowing 
had been confined to the Mignonette pot, and the tiny 
border of Virginian Stock; and it was it wonderous tale 
to him, when told how certain plants had the power of 
dispersing their seeds, when ripe, by a sudden jerk of 
the seed-vessel; such plants being the Balsam, the 
Violet, the Broom, and the Pine: how the seed of the 
Leather Grass is furnished with a plume like an arrow, 
that helps to screw it into the earth, which plume then 
becomes the sport of the winds: how the wind, that in the 
present case brought so many unwelcome guests to the 
cultivator, in the shape of Thistles, Groundsels, and 
Dandelions, was also instrumental in carrying to great 
distances the next-to-viewless seeds of Lichens, Mosses, 
&c., and through their decay and reproduction, the 
wafting of large seeds, and the carrying of larger by 
birds, where there was a little earth in which to deposit 
them, rocks, once hare and rugged, had been clothed 
with verdure and vegetable loveliness ; the winds just 
being one of those simple means which the Great 
Architect employs for carrying out His great and bene¬ 
volent designs. 
“ T see clearly, now, why you sent a boy to pick up 
every bit of Groundsel before it was in bloom. I see 
the reason why another man on the carriage-road was 
picking up the roots of Dandelion; though in one case 
I thought what a destruction you were making among 
the food of the beautiful birds; and in the other, I 
could not help thinking about salads in winter, and 
substitutes for chicory in times of scarcity;” was the 
Londoner’s reply. “But,” he added, “there is one 
thing I cannot understand. I have been looking at 
hedge - sides by the highway, and at the divisions of 
fields, as I never did before; in fact, I have looked out 
for Thistles as well as brambleberries, and sorry am I 
to say, the former, with heads ready to fly, are more 
numerous than the latter. Surely, farmers and garden¬ 
ers cannot believe that the Thistles will so increase, or 
each and every one of them would prevent a head of 
Thistle down being seen on their premises, and take 
legal means for preventing either neighbours or road 
surveyors and managers, causing injury by their supine¬ 
ness and neglect.” 
Brothers of the spade and the plough, what say you 
to this finding ? It is a poser, which, ere long, must be 
met, as any other great social or physical nuisance is 
met, in which the “right to do what I will with my 
own,” must he determined by the general good. 
Without speaking of fields, wo, every day, by the side 
of hedges, and on the sides of our private parish and 
public roads, see these winged-seeded-weeds holding un¬ 
challenged sway; ever ready to scatter their produce far 
and near. Our Creator, who saw that labour was 
necessary to our happiness in our present condition, 
has furnished us with these and many other weeds and 
drawbacks as incentives to action; for though ever the 
attendants of neglect and sloth, they as invariably dis¬ 
appear beneath the tread and grasp of industrious, 
right-directed labour. As, therefore, the presence of 
such weeds by the hedge and wayside will tell upon the 
fields adjacent, and then upon those however distant, 
we are forced not only to see the mutual dependance, in 
this respect, of cultivators upon the right-beartedness, 
and integrity, and industry of each other, hut are also 
reminded of a great moral and political truth, that if one 
class of the community, pluming itself on its wealth, its 
intellect, or its purity, neglect the poor, the ignorant, 
and the vicious, as weeds by the hedge-side, they will 
utimately have to pay dear for their indifference,—a 
penalty which has been more than shadowed hitherto 
in pauperism, crime, disease, pestilence, the effects of 
which, just as in the case »f the Thistle, cannot he con¬ 
fined to the spots where they originate. 
The doctrine of mutual dependence—in other words, 
the principle evolved in the sacred words, “No man 
liveth to himself,” or for himself, giving to the vicious 
their power for evil, and imparting to the virtuous their 
influence for good, is perhaps more acted upon now, 
especially as respects sanitary measures, than in years 
gone by—chiefly, we fear, because society will be driven 
to do that from dread, which it has long refused to do 
from the admonitions of duty. We know of gross evils 
now beginning to he rectified, the danger and existence 
of which were pointed out more than ten years ago. 
The young Londoner could tell of many a clearing out 
from lane and kennel. How? By the willing hands 
of the proprietors and residents ? No! They were 
quite contented; they stood doggedly on the right “to 
do as they liked with their own ;” they grumbled, and 
frowned, and fretted; hut legal authority steps in and 
says —we will prevent you poisoning yourself if we can; 
we must keep you from sending your poisonous ex¬ 
halations among your more cleanly disposed and respect¬ 
able neighbours. 
Well might the young Londoner wonder that there is 
no law to compel road trustees to clear the waysides 
from all such winged seeds—to force the farmer to 
secure the whole of them being pulled up, or cut down, 
before the seed approached maturity; Or to prevent him 
