LXX 
A STUBBORN CANADIAN ENEMY 
I SN’T IT ODD that, after thousands of years of en¬ 
mity, man and his ancient plant foe, the thistle, are 
now engaging in the most desperate of all their battles! 
In Biblical times seeds that fell among thistles were not 
regarded as having much of a chance, and ever since those 
times the thistle has been fought by those who engage in 
agriculture. And why should it not be fought? Does 
not the thistle crowd the wheat out of the field, the grass 
out of the meadow, defy live stock to eat it, and prove a 
prickly irritant to whoever comes near it? And does it 
not put wings on its seeds, and does not this thistledown 
ride away on the winds and scatter itself far and wide? 
Man has usually been able to get rid of thistles in his 
fields by cutting them down before they made seed. But 
now there appears a new and more desperate enemy, the 
Canada thistle, which refuses to be done away with in 
any such simple manner. 
In addition to its thistledown the Canada thistle grows 
a great network of roots in the ground, some of which it 
may send for a dozen feet one way and another. Then 
from the joints of these roots it sends up new shoots. So 
it multiplies itself underground, where it cannot be pun¬ 
ished. It lives from one year to another. If the land is 
plowed, the broken roots merely start growing again. 
How to get rid of the Canada thistle was, for a long time, 
a puzzle. 
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