ed, and
the next season there sprang from the seeds no less than twenty-five
species of plants belonging to the Roman Campagna. In the campaign of
1814, the Russian troops brought in the stuffing of their saddles seeds
from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even
introduced the plants of the Steppes into the environs of Paris. The
Turkish armies in their incursions into Europe brought Eastern
vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall-plants to
grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna. The Canada thistle is said to
have sprung up in Europe two hundred years ago from a seed which dropped
out of the stuffed skin of a bird."

As I had never studied the botanical peculiarities of weeds, and,
indeed, had no time for scientific study, having both needle and garden
on my hands, I regarded their luxuriant growth in my strawberry-ground
only in a strictly practical light. The soil was full of nutriment, as
my father had left it very rich. If this nutriment were appropriated by
the weeds, it would obviously be so much taken from the strawberries.
The latter, moreover, when the fruit was swelling to full size,
preparatory to changing color, required all the moisture they could
obtain. Now weeds are powerful leeches. Whatever they might suck up
would consequently be robbery of the strawberries. Thus as nutriment and
moisture would fail the strawberries in exact proportion to the growth
of the weeds, the fruit would be small in size and inferior in quality,
with a corresponding diminution of the market price. In a dry season
these effects would be particularly disastrous. These conditions of
successful strawberry-culture I had learned from books, from reflection,
and from actual experience. Hence my beds were made scrupulously clean
and mellow when the plants were beginning to put forth runners. It was a
troublesome matter, for some weeks, to keep them in complete order,
requiring an hour or two of hoeing daily; but then I found the labor of
weeding lasted only during August, as after that month the growth had so
fallen off as to be of little consequence. Scarcely any that started
subsequently would find the season long enough to mature the seeds. I
frequently managed to obtain a glimpse of what our neighbors were doing,
to see how my strawberry-culture compared with theirs. Though the whole
family had little else to do than to look after their acre, yet I was
quite satisfied with the resul