she has layer upon layer of
seeds in the soil for this purpose, and the wonder is that each kind
lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any of my
fields, ragweed and pigweed spring up; if these are destroyed, harvest
grass, or quack grass, or purslane appears. The spade or plow that
turns these under is sure to turn up some other variety, as chickweed,
sheep-sorrel, or goose-foot. The soil is a storehouse of seeds.

The old farmers say that wood-ashes will bring in the white clover,
and it will; the germs are in the soil wrapped in a profound slumber,
but this stimulus tickles them until they awake. Stramonium has been
known to start up on the site of an old farm building, when it had not
been seen in that locality for thirty years. I have been told that a
farmer, somewhere in New England, in digging a well came at a great
depth upon sand like that of the seashore; it was thrown out, and in
due time there sprang from it a marine plant. I have never seen earth
taken from so great a depth that it would not before the end of the
season be clothed with a crop of weeds. Weeds are so full of
expedients, and the one engrossing purpose with them is to multiply.
The wild onion multiplies at both ends,--at the top by seed, and at
the bottom by offshoots. Toad-flax travels under ground and above
ground. Never allow a seed to ripen, and yet it will cover your field.
Cut off the head of the wild carrot, and in a week or two there are
five heads in room of this one; cut off these, and by fall there are
ten looking defiance at you from the same root. Plant corn in August,
and it will go forward with its preparations as if it had the whole
season before it. Not so with the weeds; they have learned better. If
amaranth, or abutilon, or burdock gets a late start, it makes great
haste to develop its seed; it foregoes its tall stalk and wide
flaunting growth, and turns all its energies into keeping up the
succession of the species. Certain fields under the plow are always
infested with "blind nettles," others with wild buckwheat, black
blindweed, or cockle. The seed lies dormant under the sward, the
warmth and the moisture affect it not until other conditions are
fulfilled.

The way in which one plant thus keeps another down is a great mystery.
Germs lie there in the soil and resist the stimulating effect of the
sun and the rains for years, and show no sign. Presently something
whispers to them, "Arise, your chance ha