gardens, as well it may be. The native species is found mainly in
woods, and is much less showy than ours.

Our milkweed is tenacious of life; its roots lie deep, as if to get
away from the plow, but it seldom infests cultivated crops. Then its
stalk is so full of milk and its pod so full of silk that one cannot
but ascribe good intentions to it, if it does sometimes overrun the
meadow.

"In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun,"

sings "H. H." in her "September".

Of our ragweed not much can be set down that is complimentary, except
that its name in the botany is _Ambrosia_, food of the gods. It must
be the food of the gods if anything, for, so far as I have observed,
nothing terrestrial eats it, not even billy-goats. (Yet a
correspondent writes me that in Kentucky the cattle eat it when
hard-pressed, and that a certain old farmer there, one season when the
hay crop failed, cut and harvested tons of it for his stock in winter.
It is said that the milk and butter made from such hay is not at all
suggestive of the traditional Ambrosia!) It is the bane of asthmatic
patients, but the gardener makes short work of it. It is about the
only one of our weeds that follows the plow and the harrow, and,
except that it is easily destroyed, I should suspect it to be an
immigrant from the Old World. Our fleabane is a troublesome weed at
times, but good husbandry has little to dread from it.

[Illustration: A FLOWER IN A WOODLAND ROADWAY]

But all the other outlaws of the farm and garden come to us from over
seas; and what a long list it is:--

Common thistle, Gill,
Canada thistle, Nightshade,
Burdock, Buttercup,
Yellow dock, Dandelion,
Wild carrot, Wild mustard,
Ox-eye daisy, Shepherd's purse,
Chamomile, St. John's-wort,
Mullein, Chickweed,
Dead-nettle (_Lamium_), Purslane,
Hemp-nettle (_Galeopsis_), Mallow,
Elecampane, Darnel,
Plantain, Poison hemlock,
Motherwort, Hop-clover,
Stramonium, Yarrow,
Catnip, Wild radish,
Blue-weed, Wild parsnip,
Stick-seed,