Chap. VIII.— B. S."| WEEDS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 121 
Another important characteristic is, that a herb, to 
he considered a weed, should propagate itself either 
by seeds or buds at a rapid rate, grow fast, and over¬ 
power those plants which may check its progress. I 
take it to he, that this characteristic is emphatically 
conveyed in the etymology of the word “weed,” 
which, through the Low German verbs u wiien v (to 
weed), the Bavarian u wuteln” and “ wuchern” (= to 
spread or multiply with more than ordinary rapidity), 
is connected with Wodan or Wuotan (— Odin), the 
name of the supreme, all-overpowering, irresistible 
Saxon god, to whom Wednesday, or Wodensday, is 
dedicated.* 
A third, and perhaps more important characteristic 
is, that a weed appears only on ground which, either by 
cultivation or some other manner, has been disturbed 
by man. Virgin lands, such as the tops of high 
mountains, have no weeds; I saw none in the Arctic 
regions except Tetrapoma pyriformis , a Siberian im¬ 
migrant, which was growing at the Russian outpost 
in Norton Sound, on the only cultivated patch I met 
with in that country. Weeds are therefore essentially 
intruders, colonists, foreigners, or whatever one likes 
to call them,—never endemic children of the soil on 
which they flourish. They may have come from the 
immediate neighbourhood, but they have always been 
translated, though the distances may have been but 
limited. Weeds have therefore to bear up against all 
the prejudice which the popular mind in all countries 
* This view is borne out by Jacob Grimm, ‘ Deutsche Mythologie, 
2nd edit. vol. i. chap. vii. 
